In Texas, as in most of the country, only 13% of burglaries are ever
solved
("cleared"). That gives you some pretty questionable stats, if you're
trying
to figure out how many burglars were involved.

From FBI stats of a couple of years ago, the number of burglaries cleared
in
Dallas is somewhere around 3,990. The number of burglary arrests is just
under 1,700. So looking at it the way you suggest, you get about 2.4
burglaries cleared per arrest made. Projecting to Dallas's total number
of
burglaries (a little over 23,000), it would mean you have around 9,600
burglars.

The actual number of burglars, therefore, must fall somewhere between
1,700
and 9,600. Let's be generous and say that the 1,700 arrested committed
all
of the burglaries (I guess that would also mean you have no more
burglaries,
'cause all the burglars have been arrested g). If that unlikely event
were
true, the two burglars killed represent 0.001 of the burglars in Dallas.
If
the 9,600 is closer to the actual number, they represent 0.0002 of the
burglars in Dallas. If you can notice *either* of those differences, you
have very good detectors indeed.

The moral of the story is, there's no way to wiggle out of the fact that
your two dead burglars aren't going to help your crime situation. While
we
were talking 3 more probably took up burglary for a career.


Still two fewer than there would have been. That's a good thing in my
book.
Maybe you don't care -- you're in a safe place, so to hell with everyone
else,
eh?


This logic reminds me of coyotes. You shoot two coyotes and can say well,
there's two fewer of them than there would have been. Which is meaningless
and really incorrect in reality. Since the campaigns to destroy coyotes by
farmers and ranchers began the end result is a larger coyote population over
a larger area of the country than when they started. It's a lot like that
with crime too. Kill a few criminals and it doesn't do anything to solve or
reduce the problem.

I'm all for CCW licenses for everyone except the fools, which can be weeded
out in the licensing process. But killing people to protect property is a
completely different problem. As I said earlier killing someone over some
"stuff" is pretty uncivilized, caveman stuff. Or do you agree with O.J.?
Defending against assault or attacks is something else. It's like would I
kill someone for stealing a TV set? Clearly not because I'm not an inbread,
moronic, right winger. Would I kill someone for some scrap metal? Come off
it. How about 20 bucks? Okay to kill someone for that? The point is that
when some thought is applied it's easy to see that people shouldn't be
allowed to kill for property of little relative value just as they shouldn't
be allowed to kill to gain a few illicit dollars either. It's two sides of
the same coin. Rational people don't take killing lightly and don't approve
of it except under exceptional circumstances. Those who take the position
that killing for petty things don't really have a point worth defending. But
being dumb they never understand why and they don't grasp the value of human
life...unless it hasn't been born yet.

Hawke