Friday, February 3, 2012

Bogota Colombia Tries Civilian Gun Ban



via ABC News on the attempts of Mayor Gustavo Petro to do something about the murders in Bogota.


... an experimental ban on gun-wielding in public.


The only people authorized to carry weapons during the 90-day trial that began Wednesday are active and retired police and soldiers, bodyguards of diplomats, politicians, judges and prosecutors, armored car guards, gun club members and hunters.
If the experiment does produce a drop in Bogota's murder rate, which was 23.6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010, Petro said he will consider extending the ban.

Not everyone agrees:

Orlando Parada, a center-right politician on the city council, is skeptical about how effective the ban will be, saying the at least 160,000 registered weapons in Bogota are not the problem.


"It's not the definitive way to confront violence and insecurity in Bogota, because legal weapons only commit a small proportion of crimes" in the capital, Parada said.


There are no official estimates of how many illegal weapons exist in Bogota, although Petro said he believes the number easily exceeds the amount of legal weapons.
One of the detractors said it won't affect the criminals but it might help with the drunken-brawl-type shootings.

Actually this is something I agree with. But I'd add to the drunken brawls, the road rage and some of the domestic violence.

The pro-gun crowd will surely say the criminal shootings will increase because of all the good guys who are disarmed. If they're right, Bogota should soon look like some of those other Colombian cities or even Carracas.

Bogota's murder rate is low when compared with much of provincial Colombia, where violence persists in epidemic proportions, perpetrated by leftist rebels, far-right militias and drug traffickers.

In the southeastern Guaviare region, the murder rate is 101.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, while in Arauca, on the border with Venezuela, the rate is 95.7 per 100,000, according to Colombia's chief coroner's office.

As a country, Colombia's murder rate of 38.3 per 100,000 inhabitants for 2010 is far below such Latin American nations as Honduras and El Salvador, where it was 82.1 and 66, respectively, according to the United Nations.

It also was well below the 48 per 100,000 rate of Venezuela, but higher than Mexico's 18 per 100,000.

What do you think? Would these efforts by the mayor of Bogota have produce no good results or even make matters worse? Or will the murder rate go down, as they hope?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

14 comments:

  1. Look who will be allowed to carry: agents of the state or guards of the wealthy and powerful. That sounds like California. As was pointed out, criminals will not be affected.

    There's another point to note. We've told you this before, but now we see another jurisdiction doing exactly what we predicted. Registration of legal firearms is the precursor to taking them away, either by a ban or by outright confiscation.

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    1. Bullshit? Really? How about recently in Canada and the gun confiscation in Australia in 1996 of more than 631,000 firearms, and again in 2002 where over 18,000 pistols were confiscated? According to the British Journal of Criminology there was no detectable effect (on crime) of the confiscations except on suicide. What they found with suicide is that suicide by firearm went down while suicide by hanging went up.

      At least the then Prime Minister John Howard wasn't into any backdoor under the radar gun control when he said "we will find any means we can to further restrict them because I hate guns". Not because firearms are detrimental to society, but "because they are evil"

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    2. Dog Gone,

      Bullshit is such a well-reasoned response. It's interesting to see that the arguments in Columbia are the same as we have here, but my comment came directly from what was reported. Only those who are favored by the government will be allowed to carry in public, and the point about registration remains.

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  2. I will not assert that criminal shootings will increase, as I am not currently in possession of a crystal ball. I will, however, note that criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. This ban will have a statistically irrelevant effect. What percentage of Colombia's considerable murder and assault rates are committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens?

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    1. That's exactly the right question, what percentage? Same in the states, as difficult it is to determine the percentage of unfit lawful gun owners, I say it's way too high.

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    2. "Unfit lawful gun owners"? Exactly what would that creature look like, Mike?

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    3. Unfit lawful gun owner: A theoretical category with no application in the real world, something like unicorns.

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    4. Unicorns, my ass, Greg. Unfit lawful gun owners are all the ones like this guy I wrote about today. He might have had a CCW permit, but I'll bet no one checks and it will never be included in the unbelievably low percentage you guys keep quoting. Sadly, there are plenty of these guys around. You probably know some of them, but I won't expect any admissions of that from you.

      http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2012/02/austin-texas-homeowner-exercising-his.html

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    5. There you go again concluding that he does have a license in the absence of any evidence. What's your justification in claiming that license holders are rare and then claiming that every person who commits a crime with a gun is a license holder? A lack of evidence is not evidence for a positive, unless you're a hypochondriac.

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    6. I said: "He might have had a CCW permit..."

      Greg said: "There you go again concluding that he does have a license in the absence of any evidence."

      Did I miss something?

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  3. You bloggers here do realize that this mayor was a anti-government revolutionary in the 80s, right? He spent time in prison for weapons violations before being pardoned. Perhaps next, you ought to run Plaxico Burress for mayor of some gun grabbing city.

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    1. You do realize here don't you Greg that the 80s were a long time ago, and that presumably this mayor was very young at the time? And you do realize here Greg don't you that some people are capable of learning and changing their opinions?

      I would applaud running Plaxico Burress if he had intelligence, and if he ever gave up his gun lunatic ways. For now, however, so far as I can tell, he's still one of your side's supporters, so you might want to rethink your snark.

      Especially since you share his gun in the waistband dangerous fetish. You two are peas in the same pod of stupid.

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    2. What--you didn't see his incoherent speech at a Brady Bunch dinner? You're behind in your reading, Dog Gone. Let me help you:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTjwLTGYBnU

      That idiot is all yours now, and much good may it do you.

      By the way, as I've told you many times before, my handgun rides in a holster, thank you.

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