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Gun violence: guns don't kill, the people around you do
Interesting study, by Yale sociologists.
They began with a sample of EXCEPTIONALLY at-risk individuals -- 3,700 inner city African-Americans with arrest records. Their area had a homicide rate about ten times that of the US as a whole. But within this group of at-risk individuals, there were clusters where the violence was concentrated. Just having an arrest record raised odds of becoming a victim of gun homicide by 50%. Getting arrested with someone who would go on to become a gun homicide raised the odds of being killed by 900% -- against a population that was generally very much at risk.
I suppose the final thing to be drawn from this is that gun control means trying to control the entire population, in the hopes of getting tiny pockets of lawless and extremely violent people to give up their ways.
UPDATE: it also has implications for permit systems. Assuming for the sake of the argument that those can function, their real task is not issuing permits to the especially law-abiding. Rather, it is sufficient to deny permits to a tiny core of people inclined to violent crime, a much simpler task (if only because gang-bangers with criminal records are unlikely to file an application, and thus self-eliminate). Thus, shall-issue has the same result of may-issue.
Hat tip to Joe Olson...
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Thus,no permit requirement at all has the same result as shall-issue or may-issue.
Thanks for sharing this study came up on a Google alert.
If I ask my grocery store for an affinity card, they will give it to me if I have a phone number. I submit that the local po-po could use the same process for issuing concealed carry permits and they will be 99.92% as effective in eliminating dangerous folks as whatever their current system is.
Long ago, this came up on a text discussion board. The idea that surfaced was to simply punch a hole in the driver's licenses of prohibited persons - everyone else could buy and possess. If your felony conviction (or whatever) was expunged, you pay the $25 for a new license card.
The Antis "tell us" that gun control is to stop criminal behavior, but it never does and the ineffective laws are almost never repealed (the Assault Weapons Ban being the exception).
It does expand the criminal class by making law abiding people at risk of "crimes" they know nothing about. ("That gun I've had in my closet for 20 years now makes me a felon!?")
Based on looking at results only, gun control is about disarming the People (formerly referred to as "the Militia"), not criminals. The obvious reason, to cynical little me anyway, is that the Militia is the only effective threat to plans for UNLIMITED government and therefore must be disarmed.
I was repeatedly admonished by my father to follow some basic rules of life. I much later heard almost the exact same rules from John Farnam. It seems that the subjects of this study (along with a lot of other people) seem never to have incorporated these simple rules into their lives:
1) Don’t go to stupid places.
2) Don’t hand out with stupid people.
3) Don’t do stupid things.