Guns and Crime- lessons from another place?

[welsh]

So it's the guns - do they make for more crime or less?- argument again.

But this time from a different place.

Anyone see City of God?

Guns have been big in Brazil for awhile. But a couple of years back they ran an amnisty program as part of their desire to disarm the population.

Ok, someone is going to say- "But Brazil is not the United States, or Russia."

Maybe in some ways but not others?

I am sure Mr. Lott will hate this.

Brazil

Protecting citizens from themselves

Oct 20th 2005 | DIADEMA
From The Economist print edition

Gun control is saving lives in Brazil. Voters will now decide its pace

IN THE late 1990s the citizens of Diadema were so ashamed of living there that they registered their cars in neighbouring São Paulo, Brazil's biggest city, rather than be seen driving around with local plates. The source of the stigma was crime: in 1999 there were 374 murders in Diadema, a rate of 110 per 100,000 people, staggering even by Brazilian standards. The dense and gritty satellite town became notorious nationally as a “land without law.” Television news showed a video of police who had set up a roadblock to beat and extort money from passing motorists, shooting one dead. Jobs disappeared.

Today, Diadema is transformed. Appalled by the place's reputation, a newly elected city government in 2000 launched a multi-faceted campaign against violence, which by 2004 had cut the murder rate by two-thirds. Business came back. Last year Diadema created more industrial jobs than any other municipality in São Paulo state, boasts its mayor, José de Filippi. It is a spectacular example of a broader turnaround. In São Paulo state the number of murders has plunged, and it has started to fall nationwide (see chart).

Which raises the other question. If you are able to reduce violent crime and cut the murder rate, will the externality costs outweigh the costs of guns? For example, if you have a high correlation between gun violence and poverty, and low gun violence with prosperity- could the causation be that the crime creates poverty? But if you reduce poverty you might also reduce the incidence of crime?

That Brazil is becoming a slightly safer place is not apparent from the angry debate surrounding a national referendum on whether to ban the sale of guns and ammunition, to be held on October 23rd. The anti-gun movement had expected an easy win. But the pro-gun campaign, a coalition of weapons-makers and conservative groups, has turned the referendum into a vote of confidence in the state's capacity to protect its citizens. Defend yourselves, they urge, because the government will not. Polls suggest that Brazilians, whose neighbourhoods have seen more carnage than the battlegrounds of Colombia or Chechnya, may agree.

Conservative are returning to an argument made by the pro-gun groups in the US- that the state cannot protect you in time. By the time the 9-11 call respondes, you're already dead.

A “No” vote would be a setback for public safety. Gun control was probably the main reason for last year's drop in the national murder rate and is a big factor in São Paulo's declining rate. But the proposed ban on gun sales is just a small part of a national gun-control effort. It is state—and increasingly municipal—governments that have the biggest role in fighting crime.

Tulio Kahn, head of planning for São Paulo's public-security ministry, unfurls a list of possible explanations for the fall in the state's murder rate, from the growth of protestant churches, which preach against drink and violence, to the near tripling in the prison population since the mid 1990s. Crime mapping began in 1999. Several municipalities, including Diadema, passed “dry laws” shutting down bars early to reduce drunken mayhem.

Alternative explanations- increased prison populations, reduced alcoholism.... Protestants?

But the main factor, Mr Kahn thinks, is disarmament. The federal government made illegal possession a felony in 1997. In São Paulo, seizures of guns rose from 30,000 to 40,000 a year. The state government cut the number of gun licences it granted from 70,000 a year to 2,000. The effect was not to disarm criminals but to take guns away from ordinary people who kill on impulse, the commonest sort of murder. Mr Kahn notes that 80% of victims die within a kilometre of their homes, which suggests they knew their killers.

So perhaps the problem is a bit different- people are killing acquaintances in Brazil. But also, perhaps this rule also helps throw criminals in prison.

Diadema extended disarmament to toy weapons, whose sale is banned within its city limits. Perhaps more important, it started a municipal police force to patrol neighbourhoods, leaving the two state-run forces to chase criminals and conduct investigations. Bar-closing laws are enforced daily by inspectors who learn which establishments they will be visiting only minutes before heading out. Truant teenagers are herded back into school and offered counselling and training. “Violence has many causes” and demands a mix of prevention, repression and social policy, says Regina Miki, Diadema's “secretary of social defence”. A second security plan calls for mediating neighbour disputes and improving school security.

Perhaps that's the strategy for violence- to attack the multiple causes.

Local successes, such as that in Diadema, have not changed the national mood. The poor, who bear the brunt of violence, back the ban on gun sales, polls suggest. But many middle-class Brazilians, often robbed at gunpoint but rarely shot, wonder why the government proposes to disarm “honest men” while leaving criminals with their guns.

Because "honest people don't kill each other?"

“By disarming the citizen you're disarming the criminal,” retorts Denis Mizne of Sou da Paz (“I am for peace”), an anti-violence group in São Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, one of Brazil's most dangerous cities, 61% of guns seized from criminals had belonged to ordinary citizens.

Federal police registered 53,000 guns last year, a figure that would fall to close to zero if the referendum passes. That would still leave Brazil with an arsenal of perhaps 17m guns, around half of them unregistered. But even if the referendum fails, they will continue to be subject to a tough 2003 law. This stiffens sentences for carrying a gun illegally, in some cases denying bail to violators. It also requires gun owners to prove that they are sane and know how to use one. Under its terms, a buyback scheme collected nearly half a million guns last year. Hence the drop in the national murder rate. If the referendum passes, that trend may quicken. If not, it will be up to local governments to create thousands of Diademas

It's been a long time since we've had a gun thread....

Your thoughts?

 

[RPGenius]

Guns and ciggerettes are the two biggest killers in the world. When the two are de-legallized, the world can start stopping it's own selfdestruct system...The Bush Administration.

 

[Tannhauser]

And here I thought that heart disease was the leading cause of death worldwide.

 

[Ashmo]

Oh, God, it's another anti-libertarian. If I wish to inflict harm on myself, that's my own damn problem and laws should reflect that.

So long as you don't harm others without mutual consent, it's all fine.

And what's the whole gun stuff about? You can't take one variable and blame the whole world on it. The USA's biggest problem is not guns, but its fucked-upness in general. The guns are only one issue in the whole mess that tends to make matters worse (or, in some cases, better).

Considering I'm not gonna live in the US and given the assumption that guns tend to escalate conflicts and increase the probability of one person dying or being seriously injured in the case of an escalation, I say let 'em keep their bloody guns -- if the gun nuts are right nothing will happen and if they're wrong it'll rid the world of a bunch of psychos and do us all a big favour.

At the end of the day most people will stick to what they're familiar with, not because they have the better arguments, but because magical thinking dictates that they are right.

What's next? Pro/Contra Death Penalty? Pro/Contra Fascism?

Sometimes I just wished we lived in a libertarian anarchy so I could shoot some folks without facing the consequences.

 

[SmithWesen]

Well you said it yourself. Things are too fucked up.

If we lived in Anarchy. The government would be brought back given a few years. Simply becaues people really don't know how to function these days without orders.

Things is messed up.

As far as gun control goes? Let the psycho's have their guns. Their psycho's if they don't have guns. Then they'll just STAB me. And I'd rather be shot than stabbed.

 

[Tannhauser]

I would recommend reading The Last of the Masters by Philip K. Dick. The subject matter is the last organized society operating in a world of self-induced anarchy (people chose anarchy over nuclear annihilation).

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

Thanks for that, Kotario, I never heard of that book and I thought I had read or at least heard of most of his works...

I just finished A Scanner Darkly and it was great.

 

[RPGenius]

And here I thought that heart disease was the leading cause of death worldwide.

You realize of course that the largest contributing factor to heart diesease is inhaling the poisons in ciggerette smoke, it doesn't just cause cancer. You can get heart diesease's from passive smoking, so when you put together Liver damage fatalities, Lung Cancer Fatalities, Heart Diesease Fatalities, Arterial clotting. You realize the huge amount of damage it does even to those who are not smokers.

 

[John Uskglass]

I would recommend reading The Last of the Masters by Philip K. Dick. The subject matter is the last organized society operating in a world of self-induced anarchy (people chose anarchy over nuclear annihilation).

You simplify the story grotesquely.

 

[Tannhauser]

Well, I have two considerations in mind. A.) I'm not writing a summary that needs to be particularly in depth. I was keeping it as short as possible. B.) I would rather the reader discover the intricacy of the story on their own. That's the principle joy of a Philip Dick story. I consider my explanation satisfactory.

 

[Lord 342]

Try as a government might, there is no easy way to stop violence. Our society is in love with the war on abstract concepts. The war on poverty. The war on drugs. The war on terrorism. God(s) help us, the war on violence. Simply taking away the instrument of violence will solve nothing. You cannot cure a skin disease by putting on make-up.

As far as gun control goes? Let the psycho's have their guns. Their psycho's if they don't have guns. Then they'll just STAB me. And I'd rather be shot than stabbed.

I agree. And I'd like my fair chance to shoot back, as well.

The circulation and wrongful use of arms is a symptom, not a cause. People were psycho before the gun was invented and they'll continue to be psycho when some more fanciful weapons system displaces it.

 

[Ashmo]

I want a war on wars, for fuck's sake.

Anyway. It doesn't matter whether and how much gun ownership is controlled. It's just a factor.

It doesn't matter how much people smoke either. If you don't die because of what the nicotine did to your body, you'll die because of what the smog does to your body or because the guys who like smoking decide to put up a revolution and kill you.

Nobody really wants changes. We don't want to get older, fall apart and, eventually, die. But it's part of the world we live in.
Yet we WILL die.

It is absurd to try to minimalize all factors that reduce our chances of survival. Especially if these factors add more to our lives than they take.

Geez.

 

[Colt]

Ashmo knows the way. Revolution!

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

I want a war on wars, for fuck's sake.

Anyway. It doesn't matter whether and how much gun ownership is controlled. It's just a factor.

It doesn't matter how much people smoke either. If you don't die because of what the nicotine did to your body, you'll die because of what the smog does to your body or because the guys who like smoking decide to put up a revolution and kill you.

Nobody really wants changes. We don't want to get older, fall apart and, eventually, die. But it's part of the world we live in.
Yet we WILL die.

It is absurd to try to minimalize all factors that reduce our chances of survival. Especially if these factors add more to our lives than they take.

Geez.

STFU, dude, the first rule is you're not supposed to talk about it!

 

[welsh]

Of course, the interesting issue is that this is not about the United States except in comparative perspective. This does relate to Brazil specifically- a country with crime rates that are out of control and where getting killed by some drunk fuck with a gun is the way to an early death.

The world does not revolve around the United States.

 

[Ashmo]

It's not about either one.

There just happen to be two fixed, biased views on the issue: the typically USAnian "gun control is fascism" view and the typically European "Americans are psychos" counter-view.

But that doesn't matter, because private gun ownership is not a topic we can discuss outside of the individual context, which is what "gun threads" try to do with unfounded generalisations.

I personally don't think it is a good idea to give weapons to individuals, especially not weapons that can easily kill lots of people at a great distance or with minimal personal effort or are easily concealed, yet readily accessible. But I know that none of you can give me a counter argument, most importantly because that statement is merely my opinion. It is founded on an enlightened pacifist world view based on the concept of mankind's tendency being a destructive one. It is not a thesis based on elaborate research on the influence of the presence of firearms in various situations -- in fact, I'm not aware of such a research ever having taken place.

We cannot have an educated discussion without knowing the exact details of the individual situation in Brazil, the US, Canada, Finland, Germany and any number of other places we might want to take into account in order to develop a general hypothesis on the potential harm or good stricter control of civil gun ownership may cause. In fact, we don't know enough of any country in particular to base a specific hypothesis on.

The world does not revolve around the United States.

No, it certainly does not, but USAnian culture, for the better or worse, has been dominating most of the world throughout the past decades. Given the strong nationalism of most people raised in that nation, their bias is understandable. However, because of its influence, the USA and its issues have become a major concern for all those raised in countries influenced by the USA, through economy OR culture (arguably, there is not a clear way to seperate the latter from the former in this case anyway).

As I said, one of the two main concepts about gun control is typically found in the USA -- mostly for culture-historical reasons -- whereas the other is strongly influenced by it. Not everyone who promotes gun control and is not a US American is anti-American, but most of them will resort to the USA as an example scenario for a nation with liberal gun control. Why? Mostly because most people are familiar with the situation in the USA more than with the situation in another country than their own. Why is that? For the exact reasons I just stated: The USA's influence on the rest of the world.

A few decades ago, Germany strongly influenced the rest of the world (this is before the Great War) and thus discussions like this one would probably have used the situation in Germany as an example. Some point before that, France was the major example. And so on.

The world does not revolve around any country, but some countries do have a wide impact on other countries at certain points throughout history. And like it or not (I do not keep it as a secret that I am not too fond of it, btw), right now that influential country is the USA.

And apart from other inhabitants of the Americas most people are probably not too familiar with the situation in Brazil. One article does not give you enough of knowledge to base a discussion on.

 

[Jarno Mikkola]

I It is founded on an enlightened pacifist world view based on the concept of mankind's tendency being a destructive one.

The mankind has the tendency of being selfish, not destructive, though most of the actions, that are in the end taken, are destructive.

Just like most of the war heroes, just wanted to be alive, so they killed few people to stay alive, and did something not so heroic as to sacrifice themselves to stop the enemy movement(cause in most causes it can't be done) by blowing them selves up. "By not being heroic, you can be a hero, by being heroic he became the legend." 8)

 

[SmithWesen]

I am a pacifist in the sense that I would love nothing more than for everyone to lay down the weapons and live and work together in a big happy family.

I am an anarachist in that I would love nothing more than for us to be able to co-exist in a society that was governed simply by nothing more than basic human deceny and no one had to answer to a government. Everyone is free.

I am a realist in that I under with humans, these thing simply won't happen.

 

[Ashmo]

I It is founded on an enlightened pacifist world view based on the concept of mankind's tendency being a destructive one.

The mankind has the tendency of being selfish, not destructive, though most of the actions, that are in the end taken, are destructive.

No. No, no, no.

It doesn't have anything to do with being selfish. EVERYONE is selfish. There is no such a thing as altruism in the Real World. Get over it.

Any action that results in harm to something can be considered "destructive". In this case the "something" harmed is "mankind" or "world peace" or whatever you want to call it.

Even in a perfect communist utopia where everyone helps everyone it wouldn't take long until someone is born who behaves in an inherently destructive way and breaks the system.

That is until you're stupid enough to believe that nurture is the only thing that matters, in which case you're a prime example for why the "nature vs. nurture" debate is still going on.

Evolution is what allowed us to adapt to changes, but it's what prevents us from living at a standstill. That is why there will always be conflict and violence no matter how much you tweak the world towards benevolent pacifism. That is why a humanist anarchy does not work.

 

[Tannhauser]

All we need now is the half-destroyed Metal Gear Rex in the background.