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From: paul@phs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Killing Styles
Message-ID: <985@phs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Jan-85 13:23:39 EST
Article-I.D.: phs.985
Posted: Wed Jan  2 13:23:39 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Jan-85 00:16:32 EST
Organization: Dept. Physiol., DUMC
Lines: 70

Re: murder by different weapons in different countries:

I haven't been following the handgun business in net.politics much
(indeed, I haven't been following net.politics much at all, lately),
so the following may be redundant in parts. Sorry if this is so.

An interesting article about gun control is one by D.B. Kates, Jr.
(1981. Gun control: Can it work? National Review 33 (9): 540-542.)
Among other points touched upon by this article is the cultural
factor:

     "...prohibitionists abruptly stopped referring to England
     in 1971 with the appearance from Cambridge University of
     the first in-depth study of that country's handgun-permit
     law. This Cambridge study attributes England's comparatively
     low violence wholly to cultural factors, pointing out that
     until 1920 England had far fewer gun controls than most
     American states. Yet England had far less violence then than
     did those states or than England now has. Those who blame
     greater handgun availability for our greater rates of
     handgun homicide ignore the fact that rates of murder with
     knives or without any weapon (i.e., with hands and feet)
     are also far lower in England. The study's author has asked
     rhetorically whether it is claimed that knives are less
     available in England than in the U.S. or that the English have
     fewer hands and feet than Americans..."

     "European comparisons would be incomplete without mention of
     Switzerland, where violence rates are very low though every
     man of military age is required to own a handgun or fully
     automatic rifle. Israeli violence is similarly low, though
     the populace is even more intensively armed. The comparison
     to handgun-banning Japan's low homicide rate is plainly
     inappropriate because of our totally different culture and
     heritage and our substantial ethnic heterogeneity. (The only
     valid comparison reinforces the irrelevancy of gun bans: it
     is that Japanese-Americans, with full access to handguns, have
     a slightly lower homicide rate than their gunless counterparts
     in Japan.) An appropriate comparison to Japan might be Taiwan.
     Despite even more stringent anti-hangun laws, it has a homicide
     rate greater than ours and four times greater than Japan's."

There is more meat in this article, which I leave to the interested
reader. It is apparent that this author seems to have been looking
at somewhat different statistics than have been cited on the net
lately, though clearly some of the confusion arises from data on
incidence vs. rate, etc. No numbers in this brief article; however,
he is also the author of a book which might be informative ("Restricting
Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out") and another book in the
works was mentioned.

For now, let me close by citing Kates's own description of
himself, for the benefit of those who feel inclined to disregard
any article appearing in National Review as being necessarily
politically biased: "First, far from representing the 'gun lobby,'
I am a liberal criminologist with a background in civil-rights
law, and a teacher of constitutional and criminal law and criminal
procedure. Unlike those who typically oppose gun bans, I did not
grow up with guns. I am happy to say that neither I nor the rest
of my family has ever hunted. Nor am I going to espouse the Second
Amendment right to keep and bear arms, or argue that people should
own handguns for protection. Assuming that gun owners are completely
wrong on those issues, two more basic questions remain. 1). Can we
disarm the millions who believe that they have both constitutional
right and urgent necessity for a handgun to protect their families?
2) Do the likely benefits of trying to disarm them outweigh the
likely costs?"

Regards, Paul Dolber @ DUMC (...duke!phs!paul).