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Subject: Dispelling the myth of The Wild West
Zhang Fei    2/18/2009 5:36:05 PM
(Quote) These are interesting times in the fight to protect and enhance our rights as gun owners. In Wisconsin, we stand on the eve of an historic court ruling regarding open carry. In Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas, local activists have succeeded in making their voices heard regarding restoring open carry to these otherwise gun-friendly states. With all of this pro-gun activity, it should come as little surprise that the anti-gun forces are out in-force repeating their aged mantra … “This isn’t the wild west.” And this rhetoric is not limited to anti-gunners. Recently, I was quoted in a USA Today article about the open carry initiatives around the country and in that article, Texas Senator Jeff Wentworth (R), a supposedly pro-gun legislator denounced open carry saying "I think that's harkening too far back to the Wild West." With all this talk of “The Wild West”, I thought it might be informative to look at the reality of crime in the “wild west” cattle towns and compare them to the peaceful streets of such eastern, gun-control paradises as DC, New York, Baltimore and Newark. In his book, Frontier Violence: Another Look, author W. Eugene Hollon, provides us with these astonishing facts: * In Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell, for the years from 1870 to 1885, there were only 45 total homicides. This equates to a rate of approximately 1 murder per 100,000 residents per year. * In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, not a single person was killed in 1869 or 1870. Zooming forward over a century to 2007, a quick look at Uniform Crime Report statistics shows us the following regarding the aforementioned gun control “paradise” cities of the east: * DC – 183 Murders (31 per 100,000 residents) * New York – 494 Murders (6 per 100,000 residents) * Baltimore – 281 Murders (45 per 100,000 residents) * Newark – 104 Murders (37 per 100,000 residents) It doesn’t take an advanced degree in statistics to see that a return to “wild west” levels of violent crime would be a huge improvement for the residents of these cities. The truth of the matter is that the “wild west” wasn’t wild at all … not compared to a Saturday night in Newark. (Unquote)
 
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JIMF       2/20/2009 2:54:38 PM
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.  I would be very careful with data provided by some countries regading crime, drug use, alcohol abuse, sexual behavior etc.  Not all nations have the American penchant for airing what could be perceived to be dirty laundry.  One recent example of this was Mr. Ahdaminijad saying that homosexuality doesn't exist in Iran.   When I lived in Japan I saw numerous examples of the government providing false or misleading data on crime, alcoholism, prostitution etc.  
 
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xylene       2/21/2009 10:17:20 PM

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.  I would be very careful with data provided by some countries regading crime, drug use, alcohol abuse, sexual behavior etc.  Not all nations have the American penchant for airing what could be perceived to be dirty laundry.  One recent example of this was Mr. Ahdaminijad saying that homosexuality doesn't exist in Iran.   When I lived in Japan I saw numerous examples of the government providing false or misleading data on crime, alcoholism, prostitution etc.  


 
I don't think it is a good idea for open carry in major cities. For one the promity of others negates the benefits. Police under go a lot of training firing weapons in public and making sure they do not accidently kill innocents. Firing any gun in a crowded city has high chance of going through walls and hitting others.  As areas of major cities become even bigger warzones it seems to be an added burden on police to need to distinguish who is legally carrying and who isn't.
 
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Aussiegunneragain    EF   2/22/2009 12:21:12 AM

You may imagine this to be the case but can you prove this to be the case?   How many murders occur in ghettos and drug/gang infested nests around the nation that go unreported?    Are you inclined to believe that a drug runner with report the death of a man he killed due to poor business practices?

 What about organized crime which has a multitude of interesting ways to dispose of bodies (a few of my friends who are Feds relay some interesting and terrifying stories about Mafia using anything from wood chippers to alligators to hide and conceal their actions from anyone and everyone).   I am NOT talking about Hollywood movies.

  Technology advances and changes but people remain people. 
I'm not the one who has to prove anything, that is the obligation of the author of the article and the book that the article is discussing, who are using these questionable statistics to try and make a point. When they make their claims in a scholerly manner that addresses
 all the possible variables then I might listen, but until then the article means squat.
 

Is Australia bordering a Country that is filled with drug dealers and third world criminals which itself sits astride an entire continent filled with a whole host of nations plagued with drug runners, gun runners, and all sorts of interesting criminals?

When Australia has the diversity per capita of the United States and the Geographic similarities to the United States (sharing a southern border with a nation such as Mexico) then you may accurately compare the United States and Australia demographically.

 As it stands, the two nations, with respect to this argument, are completely different and, as such, your analogy is a false analogy.

 Right, so its all the Mexican's fault. Why then was New Orleans, which has a Lantino population of around 3% of the total population, the city with the highest murder rate in the US in 2002 and 2003? It's as much American's killing other Americans and don't fool yourself that it is predominantly driven by the "foreign" influence.

 
F.Y.I.; the aforementioned gangs do normally not use legally acquired weapons when perpetrating illegal crimes.
 
I would bet that the weapons are either legally manufactured in the US or legally imported though. It's really just the law of supply . If you supply enough weapons, one way or another, the price goes down and every teenage crack dealer or mugger can access and afford a gun. That then makes him more likely to succeed when he wants to kill a rival or some innocent who he mugs. If you made it harder to get guns legally then criminals would undoubtedly still obtain illegally imported weapons (as they do here), but the price would go up a lot and there would be a lot less of them. While I don't like the idea of the truely organised criminals having guns it is really the petty criminals (muggers, housebreakers, petty using drug dealers) who are the big risk to law abiding citizens and restricting the supply of firearms would put affording one beyond most of them.


 
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Aussiegunneragain       2/22/2009 12:35:01 AM

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.  I would be very careful with data provided by some countries regading crime, drug use, alcohol abuse, sexual behavior etc.  Not all nations have the American penchant for airing what could be perceived to be dirty laundry.  One recent example of this was Mr. Ahdaminijad saying that homosexuality doesn't exist in Iran.   When I lived in Japan I saw numerous examples of the government providing false or misleading data on crime, alcoholism, prostitution etc.  

I wasn't comparing America with any of those countries, I was comparing with Australia which is an open society when it comes to our social problems. You could compare with Canada or the UK or the Western European democracies if you like.
 
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Aussiegunneragain    Flawed statistics in this article   2/22/2009 12:48:09 AM
I've just crunched some numbers about the populations of the Kansas towns that the article discusses and I think that the author of either the article or the book has misrepresented (either accidentally or on purpose) the murder rate in those towns. The current population of those towns is around 380,000 (about 350,000 of which live in Wichita) which, if you divide it by the average 3 murders a year over the 1870 to 1885 period, gets you a murder rate of under 1 per 100000, like the article cites. However, you need to derive your murder rate by comparing the numbers killed between 1870 and 1885 with the populations at that time, not the present time. To give you an example of how much the population of those towns has grown over the last 120 years, the population of Wichita (the largest now and one of the larger then), was 4,911 in 1880 and Dodge City was just under 1000. Assuming that the rest of them were around the same size as Dodge and you are looking at a total population of around 10000. That would yield a murder rate of 3 per 10,000 per year or 30 per 100,000, comparable to the East Coast cities that the article compares the Kansas ones to.
 
 
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Aussiegunneragain       2/22/2009 4:17:25 AM




I'd make the point that comparing homocide rates from more than 100 years ago with current ones is fraught, as I'd imagine that investigation and reporting of homocides is a lot better now than it was in the 1870's. I'd bet that a lot of people just disappeared.
The other point that I'd make  is that other countries (I'll provide an Australian example but you could use a range of others >>) manage to not kill each other at anywhere near the US rate without carrying guns for self defence, either openly or hidden, and those countries have traffic jams as well. I suspect its got more of a cultural trait in terms of the way that many Americans choose to deal with conflict. I don't enjoy making the point because I like Americans, but I think it is unfortunatetly true.


Most murders in the US aren't triggered by road rage or domestic dispute. You get about less than 1500 domestic murder cases each year for population of 300 million, and road rage murders are so rare that they don't mean anything statistically. Rather, the majority of murders each year are fueled by drug wars across the country. You have black street gangs shooting each other, Hispanic street gangs shooting each other and blacks (in some parts of LA), and white motorcycle gangs shooting each other. Sometimes you have black gangs shooting Latino gangs while in a gang war with white gangs. The street gangs are particularly notorious for recruiting toddlers and teenagers to do their bid, i.e., transporting or selling drug in street corners, which makes them more vulnerable to turf wars. The gangbangers also go to the neighborhoods of their adversaries to do some drive-by, and usually cause deaths or injuries to teens who are wearing gang colors of the neighborhoods. Police don't patrol certain area, or are simply ineffective due to popular un-cooperation. Fortunately, this kind of reality don't happen everywhere in the US, but only in certain enclave of major cities.

 
Guns aren't the problem. Politicians shoot for guns because they are easy targets, plus some politicians don't like the idea of armed civilians. These are the same politicians who have no problem passing stimulus package containing spending millions for police agencies to buy assault rifles (real assault rifles, not those semi-auto posers) and even armored vehicles. Search for "Rod Blagojevich" and see what he has done, then you'll understand that a lot politicians in the US are psychopaths, not just Richard Nixon
I'm sure that a lot of the murders are to do with criminal gangs rather than road rage, I mentioned that because DA had commented to that effect. I do however think that that the fact that a resident of LA can be concerned about open carry because it might start a gunfight on a highway is indicative of a cultural acceptance of solving problems with guns, which at the extreme results in the gang violence that you are talking about.  I had that displayed to me in an interesting manner on my first night out in Vegas when I got into a cab to hear the (White American) driver who was being followed on the road by another cab driver who he had somehow pissed off, ranting on about how he was going to "get my gun and shoot that guy!" It might have just been that he was a dickhead mouthing off but all I can say is that I've never heard anything like that anywhere else in the world, and I've been to a lot of places.
 
As for guns not being the problem, I've spoken on other response about how I think that they contribute. The point that I would make here however is that if you are relying on individuals owning their own firearms to maintain public safety, how are all those people who can't for some reason own or operate a gun (children and young teenagers, the disabled, people with mental illnesses etc) supposed to feel safe? It seems to me that by ensuring the easy supply of guns to criminal you are dooming everybody who can't own one to live a life of fear if they step out the front door alone. There has to be a better approach to law enforcement than that.
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Xylene   2/23/2009 10:30:36 AM
I don't think it is a good idea for open carry in major cities. For one the promity of others negates the benefits. Police under go a lot of training firing weapons in public and making sure they do not accidently kill innocents. Firing any gun in a crowded city has high chance of going through walls and hitting others.  As areas of major cities become even bigger warzones it seems to be an added burden on police to need to distinguish who is legally carrying and who isn't <Xylene
 
There is no statistical basis for your opinions. In fact the more liberal the carry/ownership laws the lower the crime rate. More guns = more danger to society is a popular argument by people who wish to limit firearm ownership that has been proven wrong.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
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EvilFishy       2/23/2009 11:31:13 AM

---Aussiegunneragain---I'm not the one who has to prove anything, that is the obligation of the author of the article and the book that the article is discussing, who are using these questionable statistics to try and make a point. When they make their claims in a scholerly manner that addresses all the possible variables then I might listen, but until then the article means squat.---

No, you are not the person I called on to prove anything.  This probably has something to do with the fact that I was addressing DARTH AMERICA specifically, not you.  Darth America made the following comment: ---It would make Baghdad seem like Mr Rogers neighborhood!---  I then replied:  You may imagine this to be the case but can you prove this to be the case?   I then went about the task of pointing out the obvious regarding criminals and firearms in these United States.

This would be obvious to anybody who actually read what I wrote as what he wrote was quoted with his name and highlighted in RED TEXT.   My text, the text that was BLACK, followed there after.  Savvy?
---Aussiegunneragain---Right, so its all the Mexican's fault.----
Where did I state or imply that the entire criminal problem facing the United States was the problem of Mexico?  I did not so please feel free to READ before posting.

With that said, Mexico has a great deal of blame and blood on her hands.   Mexico is the primary conduit from which drugs and illegals enter the United States (although not the only conduit).

This is due in part to Mexico's own criminal problems and rampant corruption.  


---Aussiegunneragain---Why then was New Orleans, which has a Lantino population of around 3% of the total population, the city with the highest murder rate in the US in 2002 and 2003?---
That would probably be related to the other criminal elements NOT related to Mexico (something I never stated explicitly or otherwise) although not unrelated to the massive criminal problem you may find in Baltimore and D.C..   Feel free to dump your assumptions at the door.

  If you are confused regarding something I have posted, ASK rather than assume. 

This point alone reinforces what I said earlier regarding the America-Australia comparison.

---Aussiegunneragain---It's as much American's killing other Americans and don't fool yourself that it is predominantly driven by the "foreign" influence.---
I NEVER said or implied otherwise.  What I said and IMPLIED was that we have access to a whole Continent of scum bags ON TOP OF OUR OWN SUMBAGS.

Just to clarify, are you stating that the Mexican Mafia (MS13, etc), of the many gangs comprised of Americans and South/Central Americans is a problem entirely of America's doing with NO outside help?

---Aussiegunneragain--- I would bet that the weapons are either legally manufactured in the US or legally imported though.---
Feel free to PROVE this point.
Even if you can I would reply with an emphatic SO WHAT?
According to the DOT, approximately 40,000 Americans are killed in auto related accidents yearly (these are LEGALLY produced and owned autos).  

No sane person could argue that an item should be restricted from ownership because somebody, somewhere can or will take that legally produced and legally owed object to commit a heinous crime.

Take that line of logic and there is no end in sight before you have banned everything from autos to pencils.  

---Aussiegunneragain--- It's really just the law of supply . If you supply enough weapons, one way or another, the price goes down and every teenage crack dealer or mugger can access and afford a gun.---
Correction:  you meant supply and DEMAND right?   In other words, if you try to limit the SUPPLY of weapons, and the criminals still have a DEMAND for those weapons, they will get them (illegal weapons are still imported into the USA to this day despite laws prohibiting the practice).

Banning LAW ABIDING citizens, the citizens who by definitionWILL NOT BREAK THE LAW WITH THEIR FIREARMS, does NOTHING to alleviate the problem.

---Aussiegunneragain---That then makes him more likely to succeed when he wants to kill a rival or some innocent who he mugs.---
Owning a cheap POS weapon makes a
 
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theBird       2/23/2009 11:48:15 AM

I've just crunched some numbers about the populations of the Kansas towns that the article discusses and I think that the author of either the article or the book has misrepresented (either accidentally or on purpose) the murder rate in those towns. The current population of those towns is around 380,000 (about 350,000 of which live in Wichita) which, if you divide it by the average 3 murders a year over the 1870 to 1885 period, gets you a murder rate of under 1 per 100000, like the article cites. However, you need to derive your murder rate by comparing the numbers killed between 1870 and 1885 with the populations at that time, not the present time. To give you an example of how much the population of those towns has grown over the last 120 years, the population of Wichita (the largest now and one of the larger then), was 4,911 in 1880 and Dodge City was just under 1000. Assuming that the rest of them were around the same size as Dodge and you are looking at a total population of around 10000. That would yield a murder rate of 3 per 10,000 per year or 30 per 100,000, comparable to the East Coast cities that the article compares the Kansas ones to.

 



Hooray!!!  I knew the Old West wasn't as boring as the nay sayers claim! 
 
As far as concealed vs open carry goes, in my state, PA, you need to have a permit to conceal carry while open carry is unregulated, yet I've yet to see anyone open carry unless they were hiking, while many of my friends conceal carry, some whenever they go out.  I don't think open carry would generate much controversy as one might think though; if anything people unfamiliar with guns tend to associate concealed carry with criminals and open carry with police and security guards.  Still, cultural norms seem to point toward open carry being good for the countryside and concealed carry being appropriate for the city.
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Self regulated, cultural norms.   2/23/2009 12:07:54 PM
Still, cultural norms seem to point toward open carry being good for the countryside and concealed carry being appropriate for the city.<TheBird
 
I agree with this assessment. In spite of that, there is no argument to be made that making open carry illegal will prevent crimes or make the public safer. Too much experience and research shows exactly the opposite.
 
Smitty had it right, an armed society is a polite society.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
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