Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [m c clary] at [netcom.com] (Michael McClary)
Subject: Re: The Washington DC Bugaboo
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 03:17:28 GMT

In article <4k139g$[5 uh] at [news.ysu.edu]>, David A. Tharp <[bl 349] at [yfn.ysu.edu]> wrote:

>Gun control isn't the problem making
>life in the capitol such a hellish expireance.The real problems are
>drugs & Gang warfare.

Which are empowered by disarming the general population - taking them out of
the law-enforcement side of the fight and leaving only the cops to fight the
crooks, while also turning them into sheep to be fleeced by the crooks, thus
increasing the financial rewards for taking up a life of crime.

>Guns have never solved those 2 problems & gun
>proponents don't claim they do.

The HELL!  Look at Portland Oregon for just one example.

The city instituted "police discretion" for CCW, and the police "discreetly"
disarmed everybody but a very few white suburbanites with big money and
political connections.  So the Crips and Bloods moved into the predominantly
black areas, complete with drive-by shootings of shopowners who wouldn't pay
extortion.

When the residents of the affected districts petitioned for relief in the
form of non-discretionary CCW, the "black leaders" representing them in
the city and state legislature went into the usual anti-gun hand-wringing.
So the citizens appealed to the rural representatives in the state
legislature, who passed state preemption and non-d CCW.  Then the
law-abiding black people armed themselves - including the shopowners,
many of whom lived above the stores - and tenants who lived there as well.

So the next time a gang decided to run a drive-by down a block in an
inner-city business district, residents of the upper floor apartments on
both sides of the block returned their fire.  The driver was dead before
the car reached the end of the block.  Thus ended drive-bys in Portland.

This is NOT the only example of an armed populace demolishing a crime
problem - just the most graphic of which I am aware.  But consider this:

Remember Clinton's "hundred-thousand new cops"?  I think the number I heard
for the total number of cops in the country is something like three hundred
thousand.  There are over two hundred fifty MILLION citizens, and most of
them aren't going around armed.  If just one percent of them start carrying
guns forty hours a week you've multiplied the number of law-abiding armed
people available to fight crime by a factor of over NINE.

Armed citizens already apprehend more crooks than cops do, and they're
a factor of 5 1/2 TIMES less likely to hit someone they shouldn't when they
DO shoot somebody.  So that "factor of NINE" isn't just noise - such a
cohort of armed citizens actually represents a non-trivial increase in
crime-fighting power.

>Los Angelos has a gun policy that is
>freer than New York while being more restrictive than Texas.The [allegedly]
>more abundant number of guns have failed to solve the city's drug or gang 
>problem.

Bullfeathers.  LA doesn't issue CCWs to the general population, PERIOD.
Of the millions of Angelinos essentially the only ones going around armed,
other than the cops, are the ones who are doing it illegally.  Of those
even the ones who are otherwise law-abiding aren't going to pull the guns
out for anything but last-ditch protection of their own hides - and even
if their hides NEED such protection, waiting until they're sure usually
means waiting too long.

So of COURSE the guns don't "solve [LA's] drug or gang problem"s.  A gun
you left at home the night you are mugged or carjacked is exactly as useful
as the seatbelt you didn't fasten before the accident.

-- 
    Letting other people do things you don't like is the price of freedom.

Michael McClary                                         [m c clary] at [netcom.com]
For faster response, address electronic mail to:        [m--h--l] at [node.com]