Delete comment from: The War on Guns
It doesn't matter one whit whether an armed citizenry has an effect on the crime rate. Not even a little bit. You see, the right to defend myself and my life and my loved ones and my property and my right to the tools that make that practical is not predicated on how much good it does everybody else. If others benefit, fine, but it has no bearing on my rights or on whether or not my rights are my rights.
While one incident in my life may be statistically insignificant to the world at large, it's a damn big deal to me. And nobody, no government, no politician, no Caspar Milquetoast has the power to legitimately deny me what rights I was born with in the continuance and futherance of my life so long as I don't unjustifiably harm another.
So, while I believe the overall crime rate continues to remain rather stable, regardless of whether I am armed or not, it just doesn't matter when it comes to my rights. I await the study that shows the stable crime rate to only be stable as to occurrence but has shifting geography as some venues' populations deal more directly and forcefully with criminals on the spot. Places where a dead housebreaker does not put a homeowner on trial, soon see their crime move to another less demanding area, often within the same county or state. So the rate may stay the same in the macro sense, but I think we would find some very sparse data points mixed with very crowded data points were such a study to be done.
Jan 22, 2009, 10:23:00 PM
Posted to "Baloney and Lies"