"Joseph E. Olson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Britain has a "hot" burglary rate (occupied dwellings) many (8 ? ) > times that of the USA. A federal Dept. of Justice study determined that > the cause was the fact that American burglars (who don't fear the police > and courts any more than British burglars) are terrified of being shot > by the occupant. They were very much l aware of incidents in which they > or associates had been driven off at gunpoint or shot by the American > home owner. That awareness forced them into seeking out only > unoccupied dwellings for their criminal activities.
Perhaps you could provide a cite for this study? Perhaps you should look at this paper, which finds that more guns don't seem to make a difference to the "hot burglary" rate: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=310473 The Effects of Gun Prevalence on Burglary: Deterrence vs Inducement PHILIP J. COOK Duke University - Sanford Institute of Public Policy; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) JENS LUDWIG The Brookings Institution - Economic Studies Program May 2002 NBER Working Paper No. W8926 Abstract: The proposition that widespread gun ownership serves as a deterrent to residential burglary is widely touted by advocates, but the evidence is weak, consisting of anecdotes, interviews with burglars, casual comparisons with other countries, and the like. A more systematic exploration requires data on local rates of gun ownership and of residential burglary, and such data have only recently become available. In this paper we exploit a new well-validated proxy for local gun-ownership prevalence - the proportion of suicides that involve firearms - together with newly available geo-coded data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, to produce the first systematic estimates of the net effects of gun prevalence on residential burglary patterns. The importance of such empirical work stems in part from the fact that theoretical considerations do not provide much guidance in predicting the net effects of widespread gun ownership. Guns in the home may pose a threat to burglars, but also serve as an inducement, since guns are particularly valuable loot. Other things equal, a gun-rich community provides more lucrative burglary opportunities than one where guns are more sparse. The new empirical results reported here provide no support for a net deterrent effect from widespread gun ownership. Rather, our analysis concludes that residential burglary rates tend to increase with community gun prevalence. -- Tim _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof
