Crime and Punishment

Something Rotten in Geneva

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The headline reads “Armed killings cost nations billions of dollars”. survey from the United Nations Development Program and the

Okay, so there is an economic cost to violence. That is obvious just through the lifelong revenue lost when someone is murdered. But the first sentence of the news article wants to make a point.

“The United States leads the world in economic loss from deaths caused by armed crime, according to a global survey released Friday.”

The US leads the world when it comes to economic costs due to violence, but the author also points out that there are countries with higher levels of violence than the United States. No doubt the higher standard of living and GDP we enjoy here when compared to majority of the world has something to do with it, but the article makes no mention of that.

There is also no attempt made to define what is meant by the phrase “armed killings”. Do they mean any weapon, with rocks and sticks lumped in with machine guns and crossbows? Are improvised weapons included, such as normally innocent clotheslines used for hanging or water in bathtubs which is used to drown someone? How do they discount people who are killed by bare hands alone? Isn’t someone who is strangled or beaten to death just as dead, the economic costs just as high, as someone who is deliberately run over by a car?

And I wonder about suicides. Are they included as well? Suicide is illegal, so it would certainly fit the definition of “armed crime”. What about people who overdose instead of slitting their wrists or shoot themselves? Are prescription pills considered a weapon when deliberately used to end an innocent life?

All of these questions I am raising might seem frivolous, and they certainly are. But that is because I find the entire premise to be laughable. The people behind this study are obviously trying to advance an agenda of some kind, and the details they ignore say more about their motives than anything they claim to reveal. It is no surprise that the study was sponsored by the United Nations Development Program and the Small Arms Survey.

These are the same people that like to argue that the 2nd Amendment is actually a violation of human rights. (PDF file here.) Looks like they are up to the same old tricks, using smoke and mirrors to try and make their case.

Going to the Dogs

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I form very strong emotional attachments to my own dogs. They are all rescues that I collect starving and injured off the street. (Three at a time is my limit, so don’t get the impression that I’m like one of those crazy cat ladies.)

But speaking as someone who has actually worked in law enforcement, I can say that dogs are merely chattel. Property. My own dogs might be very dear to me in a personal sense but they are all mixed breed strays, which means that they are particularly worthless property at that.

This post alerted me to a news story where a police officer in Texas pulled a car over. It seems that the driver was rushing his choking dog to the pet clinic, and he managed to reach a speed that was close to 100 MPH (160 KPH).

The officer was uncaring and flippant, and he kept the motorist by the side of the road for 15 minutes. Both the journalists who report the story, as well as the comments at the blog post that discuss it, seem to think that an egregious breach was committed by the cop. The facts of the matter are that the officer might well have shown more tact, but he was essentially correct in his actions because he was doing his job and safeguarding lives. Human lives.

This is an example of something I’ve been noticing a lot more recently. People seem to be quicker to complain about whether or not they feel insulted when they interact with the police.

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War & Organized Crime

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My son-in-law,  just returned from Russia, sent an e-mail  linking to  Yulia Latynina –  who “writs for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta (you may remembet Anna Politkovskaya, who also wrote for the  N.G. before she was murdered in 2006).”   Latynina  argues “South Ossetia Crisis Could Be Russia’s Chance To Defeat Siloviki.”     He acknowledges she may overstate the role of organized crime as motive, but visitors to Eastern Europe (and Russia)  often speak of  violence and pervasive corruption.    Indeed, “Saakashvili did say that fighting organized crime as among the reasons for attacking S. Ossetia.”    To buttress this point, he linked to another article, the older and lengthier one in Atlantic Monthly,  “A Smuggler’s  Story”.      The stories of a couple of their contemporaries who have spent summers in Tblisi are often of the lack of transparency in almost all day-to-day transactions.