"Dodge City"?

"(which actually was rather peaceful compared to modern inner cities)."-David Hardy.

Actually it was much more peaceful than any of the eastern cities of the times. Many people moved west to escape the crime and violence of the larger cities in the east. They moved west to a peaceful clime. A clime that was peaceful because self defense and armed force in the hands of good people wasn't only encouraged but required, thus ensuring a mostly peaceful existence.

I should have clarified that the requirement for self defense and force of arms in the hands of good people was an element of survival universally recognized, not a legal requirement, but a much more important one.

Someone pointed out once that the eastern cities were SO much more violent than the west where the potential victims were armed, that we today do not know the names of the murderers and robbers who made such places as Hell's Kitchen and Five Points synonyms for urban violence.

Actually those people who want us to fear a "Dodge City" are not thinking in terms of real history of which they are abysmally ignorant (to use a phrase that does not fully express the depth and breadth of their ignorance), but are thinking in terms of television and movies. If the real old west were as violent as the TV and movies portray, we would all be still east of the Mississippi.

The same people who ripped Dan Quayle for "making laws" based on the tv series "Murphy Brown" are the same who made laws based on "Miami Vice" as if it were a documentary.

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports for 2005, DC has about twice the rate of violent crimes as Seattle or Portland OR, with a much higher homicide rate (8x Seattle's rate, over 9.5 x Portland's.)

Seattle and Portland are useful points of comparison for 2 reasons: the cities are conveniently close in population to DC, and similar to each other in having a very permissive firearms ownership, carrying of handguns, and legal self-defense situation. (They are the complete opposite of DC in this regard.)

So while it may not be possible to say conclusively that the DC firearms ban is responsible for the horrific violent-crime rate in DC, it's even less plausible to claim causality in the other direction.

Admittedly, when looking at the overall Metro area, Seattle is smaller than DC/NOVA, and Portland much smaller, but then DC/NOVA covers two drastically different regimens of legal firearm carry/ownership, and the Virginia side is not the problem--Alexandria's homicide rate is even lower than Portland's.

You, of course, forgot that the demographics of Seattle and Portland are quite a bit different than DC also. DC is a city populated and governed by blacks and the disfunctional underclass is the norm.

No fathers, no real families.. and these young men without fathers commit the crimes and populate our prisons.

I am a believer in CCW but the comparison of these cities isn't a good gauge of relative safety in CCW cities and states..

Except that it is, Crypticguise. CCW does not exist in a vacuum. The places where concealed carry permits are shall issue tend to be places where self reliance is still prized, and the idea of more government is not greeted with cheers. Those places tend to have less broken homes and less kids being raised by single moms. Add in the fact that large government means high taxes, which means more poor people, due to the direct loss of income and loss of buying power as prices rise due to sales taxes, and cities like DC and Chicago are a perfect storm of rights infringment.

You cannot expect to get a perfect comparison, like if Oakland, CA gained 100k in population and became "shall issue".

You will not see it because cities as badly run, and as socially damaged, as DC will never allow law abiding citizens to easily acquire the means to defend themselves. Hell, DC would likely ban people moving out, if they could. How else will they get the taxes they need to feed that huge government. And if the government is taking most of your money, do you really think they want to let you have guns? What if you decide to stop paying your taxes?

Racist!!!

Just kidding, wanted to be the first, I beat Al and Jessie (they're busy shaking down Imus some more).

Yes Seattle and Portland are lily-white compared to DC but the culture is the key not the race:

- 63 percent of youth suicides are from fatherless homes — five times the average (U.S. Department of Heath Census)

- 85 percent of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes — 20 times the average (Center for Disease Control)

- 80 percent of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes — 14 times the average (Justice & Behavior)

- 71 percent of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes — 9 times the average (National Principals Association Report)

- 75 percent of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes — 10 times the average. (Rainbows for All God’s Children)

- 70 percent of youths in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes — 9 times the average. (U.S. Department of Justice)

- 85 percent of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes — 20 times the average. (Texas Department of Correction)

Law and order came into Dodge City with such law officers as W. B. 'Bat' Masterson, Ed Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, H. B. 'Ham' Bell and Charlie Bassett. The city passed an ordinance that guns could not be worn or carried north of the "deadline," which was the railroad tracks. The south side was not as well regulated.

From wikipedia:

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:uwK7yz78wZUJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Old_West+dodge+city+guns+wild+west&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Wikipedia suggests you check out the list of sources at the end of the article.

Yes, we've seen all that many times. Mostly it's about how black, and to a lesser extent, hispanic males, cannot (so far) be civilized.

So we are going to do just what??? I can envisiage a solution entirely outside of cultural barriers. But that would be an abrupt end to the problem solution. The mass killing solution.

Don't think that will fly among European Americans, who pride themselves, perhaps falsely, on being so, so 'multiculturist' and, 'Fidelista' 'Sandanista, and 'Chavista', and so forth. Who after all have no idea of what they face from the various illegal immigrant classes. But it will be butchery, one way or another, mark my words. All the elements of a true civil war are here, right now. Again, the Latinos will lose this fight, as they always have. and lose it big time. Blood on the Moon. I'd not make a prediction, but unless some really hard decisions in Mexico are taken, which seem unlikely, tens of millions of Mexicans will be exported to their homeland, under circumstances of extreme violence.
Now you did know that Americans are capable of extreme violence, didn't you? No? Been living on the moon? Stick around, we'll get to you. G]

You might also consider who settled Dodge City, Tombstone and the rest of the west. There was a certain period of unpleasentness known as the War Between The States that lasted from 1861-1865.
The men who settled Dodge City were mostly veterans of that war. My great-great grandparents lived in Kansas, he went off with Sam Grant, she stayed on the farm with one old man and the kids. By the time he came home the old man, she and the kids had fought off a couple of attacks by "border ruffians", smaller versions of the Quantrill Raiders. Meanwhile her husband, my G.G.Granddaddy had fought in Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg and then took the walking tour through Georgia and the Carolinas with Cump Sherman.
Someone please tell me how that family would have been easy pickings for today's gangbangers.
Those people were not rare, by any means.The James Gang found that out in Northfield, the Daltons in another little town in Kansas.

You might also consider who settled Dodge City, Tombstone and the rest of the west. There was a certain period of unpleasentness known as the War Between The States that lasted from 1861-1865.
The men who settled Dodge City were mostly veterans of that war. My great-great grandparents lived in Kansas, he went off with Sam Grant, she stayed on the farm with one old man and the kids. By the time he came home the old man, she and the kids had fought off a couple of attacks by "border ruffians", smaller versions of the Quantrill Raiders. Meanwhile her husband, my G.G.Granddaddy had fought in Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg and then took the walking tour through Georgia and the Carolinas with Cump Sherman.
Someone please tell me how that family would have been easy pickings for today's gangbangers.
Those people were not rare, by any means.The James Gang found that out in Northfield, the Daltons in another little town in Kansas.
Oh, and that deadline in Dodge City. It wasn't just the cowboy's guns that were not allowed north of the deadline, the cowboys weren't either. Meanwhile the citizens of Dogde could wear their guns, most did, not those great big hoglegs but the smaller guns like the Remington Derringers.

Windy and Straightarrow have it correct--the towns of the "Wild West" were for the most part considerably safer than the cities of the East. The exception would be the mining camps and cattle-drive railheads during the booms--but even there either the lawlessness was short-lived, or the town was. Even the infamous Deadwood was an outlaw town for less than two years--shorter than the series.

The entire Cattle Trail period of the Great Plains lasted less than 20 years, and as the transport trails moved west on a regular basis, most towns had three years or less of the whoop-it-up saloon period, if that much.

Most western towns banned the carrying of fire arms, especially after enough respectable women arrived to give the town a veneer of civilization.

If you chose to flaunt this law, you could expect (in short order) a visit from the likes of Messrs. Earp, Masterson, & Hickok. This would either be resolved in one of two ways; 1) your handing over the offending weapon to said law enforcement officer, or 2) your receiving a sound pistol whipping from said officers and spending the night in the local jail.

This is why the left uses the Dodge City metaphor so much, enforcement of the law is not a natural behavior among lefty Democrats (or the British police) and the thought of doing so causes much rectal puckering.

Austin, Texas (state capital, Concealed Carry state) 709,813 people, 3,547 violent crimes (2006), 20 murders (2006)

Washington, DC (virtual prohibition) 581,530 people, 8,418 violent crimes (2006), 169 murders (2006).

All stats courtesy of FBI Uniform crime reports.

Ratio: VC, Austin: 1: 200 people. Murder, Austin 1: 35,491
VC, Washington, 1: 69 people. Murder, Washington 1: 3,441 people.

Conclusion: In the nation's capital, you are three times more likely to be a victim of violent crime, and more than ten times more likely to be a murder victim than in the capital of Texas.

That "Wild West" is looking better all the time.

Quoting Heinlein: "An armed society is a polite society." The average criminal looks for the easy, high percentage payoff. Knowing an intended victim cannot legally be armed is a factor for most criminals. The thing about the CCW system in most states is that the individuals who seek to carry are law abiding by nature. If they weren't why would they go through the rigamarole and background checks necessary to getting one, when the alternative is to just carry concealed and run the risk of getting caught. I am generalizing here, but if one is going to go through the process of getting a CCW it seems evident that they are going to be more judicious when it comes to using their firearms than the average person. On some level, they have thought about the responsibility of carrying, and decided for themselves under what circumstances they would both carry and use their firearm. (There are, of course excetions) The "wild west" gunslinger attitude is not, in my experience, widespread among CCW holders of my acquaintance.