"Gun town U.S.A." Not a murder in 25 years!!!

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288


[SIZE=+2]25 years murder-free
in 'Gun Town USA'[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]Crime rate plummeted after law
required firearms for residents

[/SIZE]As the nation debates whether more guns or fewer can prevent tragedies like the Virginia Tech Massacre, a notable anniversary passed last month in a Georgia town that witnessed a dramatic plunge in crime and violence after mandating residents to own firearms.
In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of "Wild West" showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.
The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.
Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189.




By comparison, the population of Morton Grove, the first city in Illinois to adopt a gun ban for anyone other than police officers, has actually dropped slightly and stands at 22,202, according to 2005 statistics. More significantly, perhaps, the city's crime rate increased by 15.7 percent immediately after the gun ban, even though the overall crime rate in Cook County rose only 3 percent. Today, by comparison, the township's crime rate stands at 2,268 per 100,000.
This was not what some predicted.
In a column titled "Gun Town USA," Art Buchwald suggested Kennesaw would soon become a place where routine disagreements between neighbors would be settled in shootouts. The Washington Post mocked Kennesaw as "the brave little city … soon to be pistol-packing capital of the world." Phil Donahue invited the mayor on his show.
Reuters, the European news service, today revisited the Kennesaw controversy following the Virginia Tech Massacre.
Police Lt. Craig Graydon said: "When the Kennesaw law was passed in 1982 there was a substantial drop in crime … and we have maintained a really low crime rate since then. We are sure it is one of the lowest (crime) towns in the metro area." Kennesaw is just north of Atlanta.
The Reuters story went on to report: "Since the Virginia Tech shootings, some conservative U.S. talk show hosts have rejected attempts to link the massacre to the availability of guns, arguing that had students been allowed to carry weapons on campus someone might have been able to shoot the killer."
Virginia Tech, like many of the nation's schools and college campuses, is a so-called "gun-free zone," which Second Amendment supporters say invites gun violence – especially from disturbed individuals seeking to kill as many victims as possible.
Cho Seung-Hui murdered 32 and wounded another 15 before turning his gun on himself.

 

And Chicago? "Gun-BAN U.S.A"? Murder capital of the country!!!

What a world.

 

this is awesome

 

Yeah...I had logically assumed that their instances of breaking and entering, and those types of crimes were relatively low. But never did I imagine they went 2 and a half decades with not a single resident having been involved in a fatal shooting "as a victim, attacker or defender".



I call on all you logical members of hipforums, who also claim to be anti-gun, to think about this long and hard.

 

Oh, Christ. Here we go again with WorldNetDaily passing off stories as news.

*sigh*

 

aristartle, I am assuming you chose your name becuase you dont believe in what socrates advocated. As I am sure you knew Socrates urged for a rather limiting existance in his ideal city laid out in the republic. The strict rules that he laid out as a philospher king would surely not work in a world that values freedom and individual thought as opposed to polity, however aristotle thought of people as more elastic, and perhaps its that elastic nature that allowed people to experiment with equal force to supress insurection that caused 25 years of no problems. Anyone under plato would have to obey blindly or fight lividly, at least aristotle gave people the choice to be a whacko if they choose.

aristotle does have a point though, where did this article come from?


I appologize for any inconsistencies, 8 or so beers will do that.

 

I can dig what you're saying, and yes.

I picked the handle-name because of the back-talk Aristotle gave his mentor and teacher: Plato. Out of the great three, Aristotle was by far the most progressive and beyond his time. His study of physics and biology were proven correct, I love how his work was re-discovered and influenced Medieval literature (I'm a French Literature and Language Major), etc. I mean, in particular his philosophies have shaped universal/natural law/truths which made everything from science to politics, to law to public speaking conceptualized into a frame of wonderment where worldly explanations for what dreams may come are possible for any thinker.

His interpretations on dreaming patterns both fascinate and captivate me.

I think I picked the name because I wanted to see my own view of the world from a metaphysical lens, from an introspection and a distortion on the old that would take to be a sense of knowing truth or a whole separate muse on reality that I could experience.

Is it 3 o'clock in the morning?

Anyway, I am full of piss and vinegar much like Aristotle was, hungry for the pursuit of knowledge and straining to escape traditional thinking or cyclical history because it's just how I keep truckin' through for hopefully some end point or moment(s) of understanding.

I dunno.

What I do know is that World Net Daily has published more untruths and falsehoods about newstories than just as many tabloids there are reporting about aliens overhead Area 51. It's a sensationalist "paper" (Arg, if you can even call it a paper?) that publishes hogwash and booger snot.

 

people still read papers? I get all my fake news from the internutz..
(pic not included, use your imagination)

 

How many murders do you suppose they've had then?

 

From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw,_Georgia

 

upon meandering about, i came across switzerland's gun policy and traditions. i had no idea. it's very interesting. obviously i'm a gun owner and hunter. but still, it's a good ponder, as is much of canada's gun ownership attitudes.

 

Enlighten us oh holy KC.

 

jeez, who fart in your face this morning? i was reading around and thought how candians and the swiss were in their attitudes regarding guns as compared to americans, ie. gun violence rates, ownership, usage, etc., was an interesting read.

 

switzerland has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in all of europe. yet it also has a law requiring able bodied adult males to keep a fully functioning machine gun in their home. but yes, as much as i dislike psuedoconservative radio pundit mike savage, i agree with the forum user of the same name that gun bans simply do not work to curb crime or violence. history has shown us time and time again that it's mostly tyrants and dictators who want guns banned. if gun bans truly worked like they are supposed to, the port arthur massacre in australia never would have happened.

during my stepdad's younger years just about everybody and their brother in middle america had a gun or two at home. yet, i can't find any studies or data to confirm that the 1950s were excessively high for gun violence. people like aristartle should realise not everyone who keeps guns uses them to hurt other humans. there's been quite a few times actually, where if a person hadn't had a firearm handy. they would have ended up raped or dead. guns existed before any of us ever did, so you might as well respect them for what they are. both tools and weapons

just remember when seconds count, the police are minutes away.

 

Haha, I was being serious.

*grovels*

 

oh. well that's alright then. *polishes halo*

anyway, it seems to me america has a really weird relationship with their guns. i don't know why. gang violence seems to be the worst culprit of the gun violence numbers. regions with the fewest gangs can still manage to have loads of guns without them being any sort of problem. i think it's primarily a population pressure thing, you think? i don't know. been kicking some thoughts around in my head for a couple days now.

 

Well, to be honest, the 2nd amendment has been entrenched into the American psyche for a couple hundred years. People think owning a gun is not just a privilege, it's a God given right!

Which is a concept that is foreign to other countries' culture on guns. I dunno, Michael Moore connected the dots between the Columbine shootings to the large nuclear warheads and weaponry industry in the town that employed most of the population. The arms race is definitely embedded into the American culture, it's sewed in nicely.

In Canada, we just started up a federal gun registry maybe 5 years ago. Before that, if you had your grandfather's gun it didn't matter if the government knew about it or not. There was a big hoopla over how much money the government was over-spending to run the registry and people were groaning everywhere when they had to get a license to keep their great grandfather's gun sitting above the mantle. But the complaints weren't about the Canadian government acting as a big brother, controlling the flow of guns and overseeing private gun ownerships... people were complaining about the costs of the program, and the inconvenience of having to register their guns.

It's a strange thing to explain to an American almost, because we all know that a registry makes fuckin' sense, but the whole cost to maintain it was under estimated so most people bitched about that, especially the Progressive Conservatives since they were the official party of opposition at the time. But they never presented the whole "government just wants control us!" angle, it was framed in monetary terms, and it wasn't even construed as a funding ploy to put money into the government, since the government was putting money out upfront to kick start and maintain the program.

EDIT: The culture of guns in Canada though, is more focused on long rifles. We don't have semi-automatic weapons, and I'm not even sure why a government would grant citizens a license to own one... that just doesn't make sense.

Most of the guns in Canada are actually used to hunt. We don't have any real use for a hand gun, although I have drove my friend into the store to buy ammo for her hand gun. Hand guns aren't really a hobby as they are in the USA, I think. I'm not sure, but do you know a lot of people who collect guns and go to target practice and stuff? I don't know very many at all. Maybe about 2 who aren't on the police force.

 

such a program is also a super convient way to trake down names of who does have firearms. so that way when a gun ban is imposed. they know exactly whos doors to knock on. my founding fathers didn't spill their own blood and the blood of others just so they could leave us defenseless against future threats. i'll be damned if i let some overeducated and naive elitist from chicago tell me i can't keep one around for defense or hunting pourposes. under barack obama's administrations new gun control laws, anyone who goes in for any type of proffesional counciling could risk losing their ability to own a firearm. even if it's just marriage counciling. if the federal government doesn't understand how valuable our constitutional rights are, they might just have to learn the hard way about the second amendment. i don't think obama will have to worry about random white supremacists killing him. more like whoever would benefit most politically from his death. if not financially.

 

but the interesting thing, really, is how the swiss deal with it. it's not a god given right, it's a DUTY. i really think, though, that population pressure is really behind most gun violence in the usa, followed up by parental indifference and apathy as in the columbine case. i've noticed in all the places i've lived, the people with the least to defend defend it the hardest.

 

the sheriff who worked the case at the time of the columbine shooting said he believed those two kids had accomplises. they also found a bunch of undetonated bombs in lockers. witnesses that day also claimed to have seen other individuals in school with trenchcoats on. i'm pretty sure this was an organised effort of some sort that went beyond these two monsters.