71 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
71 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
Arm and Assimilate
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<p>A current Weekly Standard article, <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/266umtwb.asp"><br />
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Crime Without Punishment</a>, observes that European crime rates are<br />
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soaring to levels that match or exceed the U.S.’s even while U.S crime<br />
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rates decline for the tenth consecutive year. <em>Schadenfreude</em><br />
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is not a pretty emotion, but it’s hard not to feel a twinge of it<br />
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after so many years of listening to snotty Europeans lecture us<br />
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Americans on how U.S. crime rates demonstrate that we are a nation of<br />
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violent barbarians who can be saved only if we swallow European social<br />
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policies entire.</p>
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<p>The article proposes as an explanation that local control of<br />
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policing is more effective than Europe’s system of large centralized<br />
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police agencies. This may well be true; in fact, it probably is true.<br />
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But it fails to explain the time variance — because that structural<br />
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difference is not new, but the flipover in relative crime rates<br />
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between the U.S. and Europe is recent.</p>
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<p>If that’s not what is going on, what is? The article passes over<br />
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two potential explanations far too quickly. One: differences in<br />
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patterns of civilian firearms ownership. Two: the novel presence of<br />
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large unassimilated minority groups in European cities.</p>
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<p>The article correctly notes that “John Lott has shown that greater<br />
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gun ownership reduces crime” but then dismisses this with “gun<br />
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ownership levels are about the same as they were when crime hit its<br />
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all-time highs in America 30 years ago”. However, the<br />
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<em>distribution</em> of firearms has changed in relevant ways. As<br />
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Gary Kleck noted ten years ago, the composition of the U.S. firearms<br />
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stock in the early 1970s was dominated by rifles and shotguns.<br />
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Nowadays it is dominated by pistols. Americans, aided by a recent<br />
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state-level trend towards right-to-carry laws, are packing concealed<br />
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weapons on the street in greater numbers than ever before — and those<br />
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are the weapons known to have the most dramatic effect in suppressing<br />
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crime. Indeed, one of the principal results of Lott’s regression<br />
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analysis is that encouraging civilians to carry concealed is both a<br />
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cheaper and a more effective way to deter crime than increasing police<br />
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budgets.</p>
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<p>The article dismisses immigration with “violence and theft have<br />
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also spiked in countries that let in few immigrants”. Again, there is<br />
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an issue of distribution here. American experience tells us that it<br />
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is not the absolute number of unassimilated poor that matters, but the<br />
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extent to which they are concentrated in subsidized ghettos with<br />
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little contact with the mainstream and no incentive to assimilate.<br />
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After the repeated news stories observing that skyrocketing crime in Paris<br />
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is largely a phenomenon of Arab thug-boys from bleak government-run<br />
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housing projects, this should not be a difficult concept to grasp.</p>
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<p>What’s new in Europe is not comparatively poor policing, but rather<br />
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the combination of two trends: laws disarming civilians and the<br />
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formation of persistent, crime-breeding ghetto cultures analogous to<br />
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the U.S.’s urban underclass. Both trends are clearest in Great<br />
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Britain, where violent assaults and hot burglaries have shot up 44%<br />
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since handguns were banned in 1996, and police now find they have to<br />
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go armed to counter gangs of automatic-weapon-wielding thugs in the<br />
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slum areas of Manchester and other big cities.</p>
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<p>The prescription seems clear: arm and assimilate. Arm the victims<br />
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before they become victims and assimilate the criminals before they<br />
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become criminals. Raising the frequency of civilian concealed carry<br />
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of firearms will deter crime, just as it does in the U.S.<br />
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Assimilating the new wave of poor Third-World immigrants and breaking<br />
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up the ghettos will drain the stagnant pools in which crime<br />
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breeds.</p>
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<p>And the next Euro-snob to lecture me on how America’s “gun culture”<br />
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causes crime is going to get both barrels of this prescription right<br />
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in his face…</p>
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<p>UPDATE: The Boston Globe is running a story on the <a href="http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/146/focus/Targeting_a_myth+.shtml">failure<br />
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of gun control in Great Britain</a>.</p>
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<p>UPDATE: A reader points out that I was inexplicit about what has<br />
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led to the formation of a ghettoized underclass in Europe’s cities.<br />
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It is, of course, the same blunder that started the same process in<br />
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American cities forty years ago — the social-welfare state,<br />
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subsidizing poverty.</p>
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<p><a href="http://enetation.co.uk/comments.php?user=esr&commentid=76987892">Blogspot Comments</a></p>
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