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Author Topic: How can I prevent theft?  (Read 13326 times)

Geoff Wittig

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How can I prevent theft?
« Reply #40 on: September 28, 2009, 10:52:24 pm »

Quote from: Jonathan Wienke
Despite the best efforts of TV and Hollywood to give the opposite impression, the old west actually had a very low crime rate for this exact reason. The majority of people were armed, and only the extremely foolish or desperate were willing to risk their lives just to commit a robbery or whatever.

Ooh, gotta disagree with yah there, pardner.

Historical evidence suggests that the fraction of Americans in the "old west" who owned firearms was surprisingly low. Way, way lower than the percentage of citizens owning such weapons nowadays, for example. Guns were quite expensive, particularly compared to the discretionary cash available to the average subsistence farmer or cowboy. Frontier boomtowns tended to go through a brief, chaotic and violent formative stage, generally followed fairly promptly by the imposition of something resembling the rule of law. Vigilantism and frequent gunfire were just plain bad for business.
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John Camp

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How can I prevent theft?
« Reply #41 on: September 28, 2009, 11:18:41 pm »

Quote from: Geoff Wittig
Ooh, gotta disagree with yah there, pardner.

Historical evidence suggests that the fraction of Americans in the "old west" who owned firearms was surprisingly low. Way, way lower than the percentage of citizens owning such weapons nowadays, for example. Guns were quite expensive, particularly compared to the discretionary cash available to the average subsistence farmer or cowboy. Frontier boomtowns tended to go through a brief, chaotic and violent formative stage, generally followed fairly promptly by the imposition of something resembling the rule of law. Vigilantism and frequent gunfire were just plain bad for business.

Then I suspect the historical evidence is wrong, unless by "firearms" you mean handguns. Most of the area west of the Appalachians even after the turn of the 20th century was rural and small town, and few farmers didn't have a gun of some kind, usually a shotgun. They were a tool, though, not usually thought of as a defensive weapon. They were used to kill varmints, stray dogs, to hunt with, and to put down animals that were injured or too old to keep. When I was a small child, in the late 40s, I lived in a farmhouse on the edge of town, and both my house and the house across the way (where I spent a lot of time playing with the neighbor kids) had guns behind the basement door, .a .22 and a pump 12-gauge. I personally own guns from four generations of my ancestors, and not a single one of the hand-me-downs is a handgun or a military weapon -- they're all behind-the-door tools.
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Herkko

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How can I prevent theft?
« Reply #42 on: September 29, 2009, 01:38:21 am »

Quote from: Jonathan Wienke
If it's a really bad neighborhood, the best theft/assault preventive measure you can take is to have someone walk next to you carrying a loaded AK-47 (or tactical equivalent) who gives casual observers the distinct impression he or she knows how, and is willing to use it if necessary.

..or then it is only digging blood from your own nose. In places like Ethiopia and Colombia AK-47 is not making you any special, even 13 year-old shepherd girl can carry one. It would really scare me to walk in places like Bogota with someone carrying assault rifle, but appearing non-threatening has not been irritating local people so far. If we are talking about traveling, not warfare, the knowledge to avoid the really tough quarters is more successfull approach than fireguns in my opinion. There are places in major cities and countryside of S-America and Africa, where you won't go very far with one AK-47.
Following your advices any World birder or photographer could cut off half of the typical destinations straight off ;)
« Last Edit: September 29, 2009, 01:40:15 am by Herkko »
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