"Pindell, Timothy" <TPindell@otterbein.edu> wrote:
[...]
: Is the cause of the low crime rate due to people actually defending
: themselves and killing criminals in the act, or is it the
: weapon-friendly nature of the municipality that gives criminals cause to
: consider a target they perceive as weaker? What is the ratio of
: criminals killed per attempted felony? Has the law increased the number
: of firearms used in home defense, or just increased the perception by
: criminals that a firearm may be present? I'm not trying to be a jerk.
: As a gun-owner myself, I just find the topic interesting.
Its the perception. As a rule, criminals prefer easy targets.
They're lazy, and cowards - which is why they are criminals in the
first place... Why burglarize a home when you know there's at least
one gun waiting for you inside? Easier to go one town over, or find
a house with a Kerry/Edwards sign and rob that one instead. ;-)
Taken to a larger scale, its not merely a matter of shifting crime
away to other areas - if the entire country was well armed, the
criminals would be inclined to find another line of work.
That said, personally owned firearms are (sucessfully) used
somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 to 3 million times per year in
self defense in the United States. BTW, the vast majority of these
incidents don't result in killing the criminal, or even pulling the
trigger for that matter - when the steel clears the gunleather,
the bad guys tend to make themselves scarce. ;-)
So, it really works out to be a little bit of both. The threat
of armed resistance will cause criminals to target people and
locations which they calculate to be "low risk". If they guess
wrong, and a firearm is indeed present, it serves to not only
alleviate the immediate threat, but to curb future ones (either
by taking this particular criminal out of circulation [via
the court system or "natural selection"] or by sowing more doubt
into the criminal community.)
(BTW, if this is likely to turn into a lengthy thread, we should
probably think about jumping over to the dmlofftopic group.)
--
-Jon-
.-- Jon Steiger ---- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com --.
| 1970 Barracuda - 1990 Dakota 'vert - 1992 Ram 4x4 - 1996 Dakota |
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