"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...

That's a tought one. One innocent life now vs zero to many innocent lives
later. A tough trade-off.

I think fewer criminals with guns is a good thing, and the possibility that
each such criminal *might* take out another criminal is a faint hope that
doesn’t justify risking the innocent victims he might shoot.

So it is with guns. We rightfully hear about all the tragedies involving
guns, but we have no real way of discovering how many disasters were
prevented by their presence!

So you think we should arm porpoises?

Bzzzt! I suggest there is no causal relationship between poverty, schools,
or unemployment and crime.

It isn't a 1-2-3 formula, it could be that poverty leads to poor schools due
to a reduced tax base and that impacts employment which leads to more crime.
Or it could be that increased crime drives away taxpayers etc. Or it could
be that low employment leads to family and social breakdown which results in
more young men without guidance and that produces the crime. But it's kind
of silly to suggest that poverty and crime don't tend to live in the same
neighborhood.

They are, in most sociologists view, caused by the same thing, but neither
is the cause of the other. For example, unemployment is now higher than
it's been in decades, the schools are certainly no better than twenty
years ago, and more people are below the poverty line than anytime I can
remember.

Yet crime rates continue to drop.

In which case there might be one or more factors we're missing. Have you
read Freakonomics? Interesting analysis there about crime rates and
abortion.