although I fail to see how concealed carry laws cause more crime and why duty to retreat laws was a good thing, but they are politicians in uniform.

El Paso has more guns than people, is on the Mexican border, and has a very low crime rate. Only three (3) murders in all of 2010.

Toronto and Thunder Bay. Go figure!

If he were to, it would be every bit as absurd as the claim that Europe and Canada's gun laws are what is keeping their murder rates lower without looking at the many cultural, economic, and historical factors that go in to it. (of course "antis" see those factors when we point to places like Jamaica, Mexico etc.) Compare USVI (who has very strict laws on top of US federal laws) and Jamaica (which has UK style laws) have astronomical murder rates. USVI makes DC look like Vermont, and Jamaica makes the US look like Japan. Then there is British VI next door. No such problems.

First, I am not an anti-gunner.

This is why it bugs me when people bring up places where there are many guns and lower murder rates. If it is entirely irrelevant, why bring it up? If it cannot be proven by either side, why bring it up? More guns do not equal more deaths or the reverse, as far as we know.
It seems like a passive-aggressive way of trying to introduce evidence that can't be considered as such.
I could certainly be wrong, but, again--why does it enter into the conversation?

if you admit it is not evidence.
I see ridicule heaped upon anti-gunners here when they employ the same devices.
Anti-gunner crime stats are as useless as pro-gunners'.

anti-gunners are the ones that need to show evidence. They are the ones making claims. I don't see that examples opposing an anti's claims constitute evidence or serve to disprove what they say. If their stats are faulty or cherry-picked, that should be pointed out.
It is possible that I am getting hung up on semantics, since we agree about the "far too many variables" stuff.

however it can be pointed out that more guns did not cause El Paso to be more dangerous.

One sees this all the time from the anti-gun camp. They selectively uses places to try to say that gun control slows down crime. So my side throws in some counter-examples to show that there is much more to the picture that just the number of guns.

I do not see that citing examples of where this is not the case would be helpful to any argument.
Using irrelevant stats to counter irrelevant stats does nothing but make it appear that either side has an argument.
Cherry-picking is cherry-picking.
I am not an anti-gunner but I DO have concerns about some of those who own guns.
This is not a crazy idea. I know there are some places in which I could be unfortunate to live where I might feel a need to carry a weapon.
I am lucky enough not to live in such an area.
Now-my neighbor might feel that, given the same parameters, he needs to carry at all times.
I do not feel that I am nuts to think that this person sees the world in a completely different way from how I see it.
What makes him feel that this is necessary? AND-if he sees things so differently from my (naturally) sensible and level-headed viewpoint, why should I think it is a good thing that he walks around with a hog-leg?
This is my thinking and it is open to criticism.

Plus there are 3 roads out of town and 1 bridge going south, Hardly a place for bad guys to hang out, especially when they have Juarez.

a few more than one bridge heading south into Mexico but if they wanted to shut this city down and not let anyone out, they could.

EP is one of the easiest towns of it's size, I've ever seen, to lock down in 5 minutes max. It is the home of EPIC. Anyone planning criminal activity would have to be nuts to even think about doing business there. Maybe I haven't spent enough time there, but I have stopped for the night on a few occasions, dined in a few restaurants, done a little shopping, but never really got a taste for the culture. Probably a very safe place to live and raise kids.

All those other alphabet agencies you listed are mostly located AT THE BORDER

"Anyone planning criminal activity would have to be nuts to even think about doing business there."

Yeah, tell that to all the drup cartels

"but never really got a taste for the culture."

Don't like the brown people huh?

"Probably a very safe place to live and raise kids."

Yeah, really safe except for the bullets coming across the border and hitting Bowie HS and the University of Texas at El Paso.

That at the drug violence that spills across the border.

It was the lack of culture in the white people that turned me off. Why would I not like the "brown people", as you call them?

Oh the LE is at the border? Who'd of thought that? Now where is EP again? Utah?

any group of people is going to have a culture, or were you talking about going to the opera?

Some, I relate to, others I don't. I could be wrong, but I didn't see much I could relate to in EP, like music, art. Always leaves me with a kind of sterile feeling, especially considering there is so much culture across the river. We all have different tastes and I'm sure it's a great town for many. And it is a liberal bastion, like Austin. I should probably give it more credit.
Anyway, I don't think relaxed gun laws have anything to do with EP's low homicide rate.

go to a Florida sub division filled with former New Yorkers and New Jerseians.

Did you fall in love with a Mexican girl?

My wife was born in Mexico, lived there until she was about five then immigrated to the US with her parents, brother and sisters. I met her at the University of Texas at El Paso, we dated for 4 years then got married. Been married for 29 years this June.

Only Honolulu has a lower crime rate. San Diego another low crime rate. Gun ownership and gun laws have little to do with crime rate if you look at those 3 cities. Honolulu and San Diego have tuff laws and El Paso has lax laws, what they have in common is a large number of immigrants.


http://reason.com/archives/2009/07/06/the-el-paso-miracle
El Paso is among the safest big cities in America. For the better part of the last decade, only Honolulu has had a lower violent crime rate (El Paso slipped to third last year, behind New York). Men's Health magazine recently ranked El Paso the second "happiest" city in America, right after Laredo, Texas—another border town, where the Hispanic population is approaching 95 percent.
So how has this city of poor immigrants become such an anomaly? Actually, it may not be an anomaly at all. Many criminologists say El Paso isn't safe despite its high proportion of immigrants, it's safe because of them.
"If you want to find a safe city, first determine the size of the immigrant population," says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. "If the immigrant community represents a large proportion of the population, you're likely in one of the country's safer cities. San Diego, Laredo, El Paso—these cities are teeming with immigrants, and they're some of the safest places in the country."
Numerous studies by independent researchers and government commissions over the past 100 years repeatedly and consistently have found that, in fact, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or to be behind bars than are the native-born. This is true for the nation as a whole, as well as for cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami, and cities along the U.S.-Mexico border such as San Diego and El Paso.

They come here to work, not to protect their accumulated wealth.

both Honolulu and NY City have a lower a crime rate than El Paso and more restrictive gun laws.

their murder rate is 6.4, Honolulu is 2.0 and El Paso is 0.8.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

Then too, El Paso has 95% immigrant population, way higher that the other 2. Violent crime, NY is about tied and Honolulu has about half.

Not even close. I live in El Paso, where are you getting these numbers?

confused this from the article
" Laredo, Texas—another border town, where the Hispanic population is approaching 95 percent."

For many of the folks, the border crossed their ancestors. Laredo was founded in 1755. There is also a distinct accent and dialect difference. My Sgt when I was at Holloman AFB was from El Paso. We were in a bar in Panama, one of the locals recognized his Spanish accent as an "American from Texas". In northern and central New Mexico (when I was there) the Spanish dialect is closer to 16th century Spanish than modern Mexican dialects.
My pet peeve about people like {like California native Brewer and New Jersey native Aparhio (he is such an asshole, I won't even bother looking up the proper spelling)} who move to places like Sun City and the cities and freak out about the "Mexicans".

If people come up from the interior of Mexico they have a hard time understanding the spanglish because it is not even close to the proper spanish they speak in the interior.

The Panamanian guy understood my boss, he just noticed the dialect difference. One of my trips to the middle east, I did come across a Texas NG MP unit (long story) that used Spanish almost exclusively within the unit.
In central New Mexico, the way it was explained to me was that the Spanish Speaking population retained the Spanish of that era. That is how it has been explained by Anglo Spanish speakers and local Latinos. My Spanish sucks so bad, I would not know the difference.

But many have been there for many generations so they do not qualify as immigrants.

New Yorkers and Hawaiians are too busy with life than to be thinking about shooting each other. And El Paso is like a fortress.

El Paso over Toronto or Vancouver let alone Thunder Bay.

http://netnewsledger.com/2011/12/15/thunder-bay-ontarios-most-dangerous-city-macleans-magazine-survey-says-yes/

If I were to live in a city again, I'd choose New Orleans first and it has the highest murder rate. Spend quite a lot of time there. Have lots of family and friends in NOLA. By far the coolest city in this country. Second choice, Austin, but I like to be close to the ocean and the traffic has become crazy. Toronto is another great city, spent 3+ years there and Lake Ontario is a fair substitute for the ocean.

Last edited Sat Apr 28, 2012, 11:33 PM - Edit history (1)

But then I like the Southwest and Mexican culture. But it is still too big of a city.
Edit to add: EP is safer than those Canadian cities.

But there are much better places to satisfy those tastes than El Paso. I always find it kind of creepy driving through on I10 and looking at the Mexican side. Beautiful modern American city, full of taxpayer dollars, on one side of the river and total squalor and despair on the other.

on US 54. Cuidad Juarez and the Philippines (pre 1988 South Korea) taught me more about the gilded age and the evil of plutocracy than any history class did. Being in South Korea going from authoritarian police state to real democracy and watching what doubling the minimum wage and strong unions (not to mention protectionist trade policy) did for the average Korean opened my eyes than than Air America (not the airline). The history of gun laws in both places (plus the southern US and mid west) taught me to be skeptical of claims of "public safety".

I'll have to check it out sometime. I always liked Key West. The diving is OK, and it is fun in a decadent sort of way.

Just the fish tacos make it worth it.

have to try them out. Isn't San Diego the anti San Francisco? Or is it just Orange County?

Where do you get this crap?

Hmm, let me think! Why would anyone think EP was a fortress and be surprised at low crime rates?
Rio grande, 20+ LE agencies, EPIC, Border Patrol, ICE, DEA, EPPD, EPSD, ATF, 2 roads out of town I10 & Route 54, or the bridge to Juarez.

and really cool. You might catch flack for using Reason as a source, but if it makes Pat Buchanan's head explode, so be it.

Reason is open in my other tab.

Hell, its my homepage

EDIT: P.S. The trolls around here should go dig through the Reasonoid trolls' material, maybe they would get better, or at least funnier.

Philly and San Diego knows that the poverty in Philly far exceeds poverty in SD..so obvious it probably needs a publicly funded study to identify the difference..