sábado, mayo 27, 2006

EL MEJOR REGALO que uno le puede hacer a su abuela es una Uzi:
Giving fully automatic weapons to old ladies sounds extreme, and I’m not claiming that people too weak to care for themselves should brandish sidearms; neither should drunks or children. But arming decent people, including your Aunt Bea, and arming them with – yes – machine guns if they want, is the way to make America safer for all of us. Let me explain:

Prof. John Lott has shown (see his book, articles, and testimony) that violent crime decreases when states and cities relax restrictions on gun ownership and concealed carry. Further, people holding concealed-carry permits commit an almost implausibly low number of violent crimes. I noted some figures earlier, and provided links, regarding revocations of concealed-carry permits following arrests of permit holders. Those impressive numbers become dramatically more impressive when revocations are counted only for violent offenses; they go lower still when only convictions are recorded.

Whether this success is due to self-selection (few felons march into the sheriff’s department offering positive ID) or to the self-inhibiting awareness that you are both physically secure and legally liable (as I discussed a few weeks ago) is an interesting question, but the rule holds in every state regardless: Civilian gun toters are goodguys.

And it’s not because they’re shrinking violets – see Keep and Bear Arms and Packing.org for daily news of the legal acts of law-abiding gun owners, from basic self defense to heroic intervention in defense of others.

Even policemen should be happy. Not only are they not threatened by permit holders, though some department chief in every state will claim so when laws are relaxed, but there is preliminary evidence from Prof. David Mustard that police in carry-permitting areas are safer after people begin toting than before.

Now, how about automatic weapons? This is almost common knowledge among 2nd-Amendment activists, but it was new to me: There are over 240,000 legally owned fully automatic firearms in the United States. There are also illegal ones; join a gang to get yours. But of all the legally owned machine guns, there has been one (!) occasion since 1934 where one has been used in commission of a crime, and that was by a policeman. (This startling datum is documented here and here; also interesting is that relatively few machine guns are used by criminals.)

"But why would anybody need a machine gun?" While violent crime generally is on the decrease in the USA, there are still pockets where residents are afraid to leave their homes even in daylight. And those areas with the fewest legal weapons are the ones in the worst shape – L.A., D.C., New York City…

"But why a machine gun?"
Edmonds sigue explicando por qué es mejor un subfusil que una pistola para la autodefensa de personas corrientes y molientes. En Estados Unidos, claro; aquí ya sabemos cómo está la cosa, aunque es interesante que se empieza a hablar del tema dada la ola de atracos a domicilios ocupados, un fenómeno prácticamente desconocido en la tierra del Tío Sam. Es evidente que los cacos se lo piensan dos veces si sospechan que pueden salir de la casa con un tiro en el trasero.

(via Neopàtria)