On Sat, 2 Feb 2013 08:47:58 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
(EH)

(EH)

My family is from NH, and I can testify that the culture there might
as well be in a different country from New York City or New Jersey.
You can't validly draw many comparisons.

All three of the upper New England states -- NH, Maine, and
Vermont -- have lax gun laws and very low violent crime rates.
(Interestingly, NH's property crime rate is higher than that of NJ,
but that's another discussion). That's always been the case, even a
century ago, when there were few gun laws in any state.

So it's obvious that the low violent crime rates came first, and
that allowed lax gun laws. To confirm the lack of cause-and-effect
of gun laws to crime, compare NH with some southern states that have
fairly lax gun laws but high murder and other violent crime rates.
You see the opposite apparent relationship. But it's an illusion,
IMO. There is no causative relationship either way, based on the
evidence.

Ed Huntress

We just had another apparently senseless killing with a -knife- by a
man from gun-tolerant Vermont:
http://www.ldnews.com/national/ci_22...-stabbed-at-nh
"At this point in time there was no connection between the two, and it
was random,"
"Every indication I've been given is, frankly, that this is a random,
senseless attack,"

Something besides gun availability is making people kill randomly, or
drive into oncoming traffic.
The rabid, irrational gun haters who post here would be good
candidates for the MMPI test.
(Which I learned about from a doctor at a party, not from taking it.)

Vermont had 8 homicides in 2011: 4 by firearms, and 2 by stabbing.
There isn't a lot of random anything in Vermont.

I doubt if there are twice as many guns as knives up there. They seem
to eat like civilized people

However, 51% of their homicides over the past 17 years were domestic
violence cases, and 58% of those victims were women. Maybe they're
lousy cooks and the husbands objected. One of those homicides was by
hanging. The wife couldn't make a decent Yankee potroast, maybe, but
hanging her for it seems a little extreme. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress