From dhenwood at panix.com Tue May 4 12:38:24 1999
[ From Doug's posting, but first ... ]
J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
>What there is an order of magnitude difference
>in is the sheer availability of guns, 240 million by the
>last count.
It's also interesting to note that there are more gun owners in the US than there are voters in the last Presidential election. If that's not proof enough that guns don't "cause" violent crime, I don't know what is. That is: if guns "cause violence" then instead of asking "why is the US so violent?" we should be asking "why is the US *not* so violent?" ...
My own answer to why we're so violent is that there's so much at stake here: crime is one way to try to get around not getting what you think is fair, and we've certainly "protected" that which would like to be had by the have-nots. The underground economy, the "underworld" and the drug trade are all rooted in getting more for the have-nots. Lately, this has gotten worse for the have-nots, and the stakes are higher. I think it also has evolved into something that's easier to grasp: much like the language on TV gets saucier and the skin gets more plentiful in R rated movies over time, as people get "used" to it.
Among crime circles, there's a "violence culture" that has progressed.
>It is also true that we have a frontier legacy
>of guns and that we are the only nation that allows people
>to own guns without having a license.
Er, the "frontier legacy" came quite a bit after the "victory over tyranny legacy" some hundred years earlier. The standard answer as to why licensing isn't required (except for some kinds of weapons) is that in nearly every case of weapon confiscation, licensing has been the key to locating the weapons. If you don't trust your government to confiscate your weapons, you can see why people (including Congress) have been reluctant to license weapons. Of course this has recently shifted: DOJ, spearheded by Reno, has been testing the waters lately with the idea of collecting this data, despite reports from BATF that it almost never helps in investigations.
[ Finally, we get toDoug's actual question ... ]
But why are guns so available?
I'd say because they just aren't the Big Problem that some people think they are. Statistically speaking, "damn near all" gun owners are law-abiding citizens with no intention of commiting a violent crime. You sure wouldn't know it from reading this list, but really Doug: isn't it only among this crowd that you could ask such a question with a straight face?
Try going to Wal-Mart and asking "we the people" ...
It's almost that way with "why are we so violent?" ... "we" aren't! The vast majority of violent crimes are commited by a small number of people, many of whom are associates of each other. There are far fewer violent criminals than there are violent crimes -- most violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, and most convicted criminals committed many cries before they were caught; in fact, one significant-but-not-dominant factor in the recent drop in violent crime is that more violent criminals are serving jail sentences.
Yes, there is a disproportionate number of "new" inmates from the so-called "war on drugs", but 40% of the increase of incarcerated convicts in the 90's are there for violent crimes. And we *know* how much bigger the prison population is getting.
/jordan