guns prevent violence!

[William S. Lear]

On Tuesday, May 4, 1999 at 15:45:16 (-0400) Wojtek Sokolowski writes:
>At 12:41 PM 5/4/99 -0400, Barkley Rosser wrote:
>>     The real problem with this Lott/Landes drivel
>>is that it does not make a proper comparison.
>>How about comparing the US (or the states in
>>the US with concealed gun laws) with the rest
>>of the world?  Guess who has a whole lot more
>>deaths from guns, and I mean a whole lot more!
>
>
>Barkley, I generally like what you write, but I think you screwed up this
>one.  Between-country comparisons are even more suspect than between-state
>comparison because the ceteris paribus condition is very difficult to meet,
>hence the attribution of causality is moot.

I think Barkley is spot-on here.  Simply because cross-country
comparisons must be done with care does not mean they are all
"suspect".

According to a review by Booklist of the book *Crime Is Not the
Problem: Lethal Violence in America*, by Franklin E. Zimring, "In most
forms of nonviolent property crime, both nation-to-nation and
city-to-city comparisons between the U.S. and other developed
countries display remarkable similarities; only in terms of lethal
violence (crimes that produce death or serious injury) is the
U.S. four to eighteen times 'ahead' of other nations".

Bill