Stump Water
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Sun, July 29, 2007
Real roots of crime
Don't blame legal handguns for epidemic of violence
By IAN ROBINSON
A boy named Ephraim Brown was killed recently in Toronto, caught in a crossfire between the vicious thugs who populate large cities.
It is a wicked and sad thing.
I have known parents who have lost a child -- to cancer, to auto accidents -- and despite their indescribable courage, they were never the same again, carrying with them a hole in their hearts that never healed.
But at least they were spared having politicians circle their children's corpses, making political points before the bodies were buried.
Ephraim Brown was killed with a gun. So, predictably, Toronto Mayor David Miller, called for a ban on legally owned handguns, not knowing where the firearm that took this boy's life originated.
Because sometimes criminals steal guns from legal owners and use them for illegal purposes.
This is like calling for a ban on cars because sometimes people hotwire them, drive them through red lights, and take out an entire family.
And this call came despite the fact that to own a legal firearm in this country, let alone a handgun, requires jumping through legislative hoops that beggar the imagination. Occasionally, some nut slips through, but it is so rare as to rival the odds of winning a major lottery prize.
As Sun Media reported in the aftermath of this tragedy, of the nation's 2 million licensed gun owners, between 1997 and 2005, 111 of them used their firearms to murder someone. That's 0.00555%.
At that rate, legal firearms owners pose less danger to society than over-the-counter pain medications, physician malpractice, and indulging in potato chips.
Sssh. Don't tell Miller. I like driving, aspirin, regular check-ups and those chips with ripples that really scoop up the dip.
Less predictable was the viewpoint of ex-politician -- if one can ever be an ex-politician; I think it's like the IRA, once in, never out -- and now Sun columnist, Sheila Copps.
She put the blame for this tragedy squarely on the absence of sports funding.
Yep. Turns out poor families don't spend as much as richer families on enrolling their kids in soccer and hockey. No surprise. Those things cost money. As Copps wrote: "We say we want alternatives to the lure of gangs? Sports teams could provide those alternatives."
And, of course, Copps wants government to pay for it, choosing to ignore the real roots of poverty and crime.
It is understandable why she does this, because Sheila is a feminist, and feminist theory forbids examination of the true roots of crime because it makes them uncomfortable and violates the sacred tenet of their creed, which says men are essentially disposable.
The real roots of poverty for women in single-parent households that foster criminal male youth are simple: Divorce or failure to marry in the first place. The real roots -- which erase race and economic status from the equation-- is the absence of a male in the household.
Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute, testifying before the U.S. Senate, cited the work of Dr. June O'Neill and Anne Hill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who found welfare programs for young, unmarried pregnant women led to an increase in the number of babies born out of wedlock. And that increases in those welfare rates resulted in a lower marriage rate for those pregnant women.
O'Neil also found black kids from single-parent homes were twice as likely to be arrested for crimes as those from black families where the father is present. U.S. figures showed 70% of young offenders of all colours in custody came from fatherless homes as do 43% of prison inmates.
And further, the more single-parent families in a neighbourhood, the more crime.
Truth is, I'm not sure how to fix this. Maybe we shouldn't be paying young women who are dumb enough to get knocked up to have their babies.
Maybe if they didn't have that safety net, they'd remember to take that little pill, or be more discriminating about who they bump uglies with.
Maybe married couples with one income-earner should get a tax break to encourage the essential building block of society.
One thing I'm sure of: Buying a kid a glove and getting him on a team where a coach may have five minutes of one-on-one time with him twice a week is no substitute for throwing the ball around in the backyard every night after school ... with his dad.
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http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Robinson_Ian/2007/07/29/4377333-sun.html
Sun, July 29, 2007
Real roots of crime
Don't blame legal handguns for epidemic of violence
By IAN ROBINSON
A boy named Ephraim Brown was killed recently in Toronto, caught in a crossfire between the vicious thugs who populate large cities.
It is a wicked and sad thing.
I have known parents who have lost a child -- to cancer, to auto accidents -- and despite their indescribable courage, they were never the same again, carrying with them a hole in their hearts that never healed.
But at least they were spared having politicians circle their children's corpses, making political points before the bodies were buried.
Ephraim Brown was killed with a gun. So, predictably, Toronto Mayor David Miller, called for a ban on legally owned handguns, not knowing where the firearm that took this boy's life originated.
Because sometimes criminals steal guns from legal owners and use them for illegal purposes.
This is like calling for a ban on cars because sometimes people hotwire them, drive them through red lights, and take out an entire family.
And this call came despite the fact that to own a legal firearm in this country, let alone a handgun, requires jumping through legislative hoops that beggar the imagination. Occasionally, some nut slips through, but it is so rare as to rival the odds of winning a major lottery prize.
As Sun Media reported in the aftermath of this tragedy, of the nation's 2 million licensed gun owners, between 1997 and 2005, 111 of them used their firearms to murder someone. That's 0.00555%.
At that rate, legal firearms owners pose less danger to society than over-the-counter pain medications, physician malpractice, and indulging in potato chips.
Sssh. Don't tell Miller. I like driving, aspirin, regular check-ups and those chips with ripples that really scoop up the dip.
Less predictable was the viewpoint of ex-politician -- if one can ever be an ex-politician; I think it's like the IRA, once in, never out -- and now Sun columnist, Sheila Copps.
She put the blame for this tragedy squarely on the absence of sports funding.
Yep. Turns out poor families don't spend as much as richer families on enrolling their kids in soccer and hockey. No surprise. Those things cost money. As Copps wrote: "We say we want alternatives to the lure of gangs? Sports teams could provide those alternatives."
And, of course, Copps wants government to pay for it, choosing to ignore the real roots of poverty and crime.
It is understandable why she does this, because Sheila is a feminist, and feminist theory forbids examination of the true roots of crime because it makes them uncomfortable and violates the sacred tenet of their creed, which says men are essentially disposable.
The real roots of poverty for women in single-parent households that foster criminal male youth are simple: Divorce or failure to marry in the first place. The real roots -- which erase race and economic status from the equation-- is the absence of a male in the household.
Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute, testifying before the U.S. Senate, cited the work of Dr. June O'Neill and Anne Hill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who found welfare programs for young, unmarried pregnant women led to an increase in the number of babies born out of wedlock. And that increases in those welfare rates resulted in a lower marriage rate for those pregnant women.
O'Neil also found black kids from single-parent homes were twice as likely to be arrested for crimes as those from black families where the father is present. U.S. figures showed 70% of young offenders of all colours in custody came from fatherless homes as do 43% of prison inmates.
And further, the more single-parent families in a neighbourhood, the more crime.
Truth is, I'm not sure how to fix this. Maybe we shouldn't be paying young women who are dumb enough to get knocked up to have their babies.
Maybe if they didn't have that safety net, they'd remember to take that little pill, or be more discriminating about who they bump uglies with.
Maybe married couples with one income-earner should get a tax break to encourage the essential building block of society.
One thing I'm sure of: Buying a kid a glove and getting him on a team where a coach may have five minutes of one-on-one time with him twice a week is no substitute for throwing the ball around in the backyard every night after school ... with his dad.
==========================================================
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Robinson_Ian/2007/07/29/4377333-sun.html
