SpotlightRanger
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Or so says the writer of this piece......
http://opinion.globaltimes.cn/foreign-view/2009-08/457150.html
http://opinion.globaltimes.cn/foreign-view/2009-08/457150.html
By William Daniel Garst
I have lived in China for four years and there are naturally many things that I miss about my mother country, the United States.
However, the August 4 multiple shooting in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, in which a gunman killed three people and wounded 10 others, was a reminder of one thing I don’t miss about the US, namely its pervasive gun violence.
I have personally experienced this gun violence. In the fall of 1994, while sharing a house in Los Angeles, I survived a shootout that occurred inside the dwelling. And several years later, when living in my Central California hometown, I was shot at while walking to a local video store. Fortunately, the gunman hit the building I was walking beside, not my head.
In addition to Beijing’s history, culture and hospitable locals, I have come to value the sense of personal security that has come with living here. I have spent many nights walking on the city’s streets in all kinds of neighborhoods and have never felt in the least bit threatened. Indeed, I have yet to be robbed, much less violently assaulted.
Nearly 17,000 people were murdered in the US during 2005. In that year, 31,000 homicide cases were reported in China, according to the Ministry of Public Security. Since China’s population greatly exceeds that of the US, the murder rate per 100,000 citizens here is 2.39, less than half of the US figure of 5.61.
Thus even if the Chinese figures somewhat underreport the number of homicides, China is a much safer country than the US.
It will not do to ascribe this difference to China’s heavy use of the death penalty. Most US states also execute murderers. In fact, the murder rate of the state of Texas, which executes more people than any other US state, is slightly above the US average (5.9 per 100,000 citizens, the 17th highest in the country).
And despite Louisiana’s active use of the death penalty, New Orleans is the US’s most violent city, with a murder rate of 70 per 100,000 citizens.
Thus while capital punishment might be justified on moral grounds — people who take other people’s lives should forfeit their own — the empirical evidence suggests that it is no deterrent to murder.
Moreover, the Bridgeport gunman, along with gunmen in a string of other recent US shooting atrocities, as well as the infamous Columbine High School massacre, all killed themselves before they could be arrested. Would anyone claim that the death penalty acts as a deterrent in these cases?
One could argue that the US’ inner city poverty and gangs is what makes it more violent than China. It is true that these pathologies are much less acute here than in the US. However, the ready availability of guns, including the famous AK-47 assault rifle, is what makes US gang violence so deadly.
And while China’s recent rapid socio-economic change has been overwhelmingly for the better, it has made the lives of many people more insecure. The current Chinese leadership recognizes this and is striving to create a “harmonious society,” but the number of embittered and disturbed people more prone to commit crimes, including murder, has certainly grown in China in recent years.
However, these people lack access to firearms. Guns are used for sports, like marksmanship and hunting, but their main purpose has always been to provide an effective way of killing people. In particular, they make it easy to kill a bunch of people at once. By contrast, it is much more difficult to stab, strangle, or beat to death one person and next to impossible to do that to four or five people in one go.
Consider last year’s tragic Drum and Bell Tower stabbing. If the former worker who committed this senseless act had possessed a gun, he could have from the tower shot and killed not just one, but scores of people.
US gun-owners would certainly say that their freedom to own guns makes all Americans freer than people in China. They fail to recognize that a tradeoff exists between this..... (continued on site)
