From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: c1d7b7fb785f8f96cc2654b90649495127215b9d68500bb574ccee00fd8c9555
Message ID: <19970828091808.35630@bywater.songbird.com>
Reply To: <Pine.LNX.3.93.970828143836.514B-100000@shirley>
UTC Datetime: 1997-08-28 16:24:52 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 00:24:52 +0800
From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 00:24:52 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Socio-Economic Cults (Re: Cypherpunk Cults)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.93.970828143836.514B-100000@shirley>
Message-ID: <19970828091808.35630@bywater.songbird.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
On Thu, Aug 28, 1997 at 08:37:46AM -0700, Jonathan Wienke wrote:
> >
> >And nor the innconent bystanders. The 'you pissed me off - bang bang
> >you're dead' mentality was the reason for one of the largest
> >genocides in human history.
>
> Excuse me, but if you are referring to the Old West, you are seriously
> misinformed.
I believe he was referring to native americans.
> While there certainly was violent crime, the murder rate
> (excluding self-defense, deaths from wars, etc.) was actually lower than it
> is today. I came across a doctoral thesis written several years ago that
> did a statistical analysis of population data and newspaper obituaries in
> cities like Tombstone from around 1850-1890. The conclusion of the paper
> was that while the drinking/gambling/red light districts were certainly
> violent places, in general, there was less crime than there is today. The
> life of criminals is hard when everyone is armed, and when the justice
> system actually executes convicted murderers in a timely fashion. (Capital
> punishment is the only treatment for criminals that has a 0% recidivism rate.)
1. There are lots of doctoral theses that are seriously flawed. Off
the top, you mention that "self-defense" was excluded. That begs the
question -- you now have to define self-defense.
2. Of course the "old west", as usually portrayed, is largely a myth.
3. Raw crime rates are not that useful -- go to Iran or Iraq.
4. The fact remains that settlers established governments and laws,
and did *not* leave enforcement to the individual.
> Of course, the primary flaw in your logic is that you assume anyone who
> wants to own a gun is deranged or unbalanced somehow, and that gun
> ownership causes crime.
Oh piffle. No such assumption was stated. You are erecting a
strawman so you can stand on a soapbox and shoot it full of holes.
--
Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
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