[lit-ideas] Re: It's not guns that kill people
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 10:41:14 -0700
It's Prime Ministers, planning funerals before folk are cold:
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=824002006
And more on Scotland's knife problem:
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=823982006
Frankly I don't know what to make of this. Without comparative
numbers, the story is emotionally compelling but a poor guide for
policy. When my wife was a resident in an L.A. County hospital both
Friday and Saturday nights were called "The Knife and Gun Club."
Whether banning knives will make any difference to this kind of thing
remains to be seen. You'll note that the Scotsman wants to say, "It's
not just the poor folk who are doing this. A boy was even knifed in
St. Andrews." People were writing exactly the same story when I was a
kid. "It's not just in the rough areas. Someone was even knifed
in..."
When I was a freelance journalist, I once did a story on a professor of
criminology. His view was that crime statistics don't change very much
and that measures to "stop" or "reduce" crime have very little effect
beyond making political capital and making victims and potential
victims feel safer. Does anyone know of good, up-to-date reading on
this subject?
David Ritchie
(whose brother just parked in the wrong London parking lot and lost
three suitcases to thieves)
Portland, Oregon
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