From: owner-cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V15 #926 Reply-To: cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Sender: owner-cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Errors-To: owner-cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Precedence: normal owner-cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Cdn-Firearms Digest Tuesday, September 17 2013 Volume 15 : Number 926 In this issue: "Unarmed man, possibly looking for help after wreck, shot by ... The Bay of Pigs' unfinished battle Re: Canadians reduced to stone age weapons for self-defense ... Re: Cdn-Firearms Digest V15 #924 How fascist are the new anti-gun nuts letter to editor, abused privacy rights LETTER TO THE MINISTER OF PUBLIC SAFETY RE: HIGH RIVER ... Look familiar?? NFA SENDS FIVE LETTERS TO MINISTER OF PUBLIC SAFETY CBC - Bear increase spurs call for hunting change QUOTE OF THE DAY BBC - Amber Hill: Sixteen-year-old British shotgun superstar Our inner cities became the safest places. Let's export ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 13:48:23 -0600 From: Larry James Fillo Subject: "Unarmed man, possibly looking for help after wreck, shot by ... ...police" Tasered, then shot to death for... excessive force on both counts. Para-military rules of engagement are a danger to the public that's why the concept of Peace Officers was put forth. I think every jurisdiction needs to celebrate a "Sir Robert Peel Day" and review his principles. Communities would be safer. ========================= ======================= September 14, 2013, 11:43 PM Unarmed man, possibly looking for help after wreck, shot by police CHARLOTTE, N.C. An unarmed man who may have been looking for help after a vehicle wreck was shot and killed by a police officer Saturday as he ran toward him, police said. The officer was later charged with voluntary manslaughter. A statement issued by police said officers responded to a breaking and entering call on the city's east side around 2:30 a.m. Someone had knocked on the door of a residence, and the homeowner opened the door, thinking it was her husband. When she discovered it wasn't, she closed the door and called 911. When officers arrived, they found Jonathan A. Ferrell, 24, a short distance from the home, and he matched a description given by the homeowner, police said. Officer Randall Kerrick. / Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police The statement said officers approached Ferrell to investigate the original call. Ferrell ran toward the officers and was hit with a Taser. Ferrell continued to run toward police when Officer Randall Kerrick fired his weapon, hitting Ferrell several times. Ferrell was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators said they think a wrecked car discovered down an embankment in nearby woods may have been driven by Ferrell, and investigators say he may have been trying to get help from the resident who called 911. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe said the accident was serious and Ferrell would have been forced to climb out of the back window of the vehicle. He apparently walked to the nearest house and banged on the door. Monroe told a news conference that he didn't think Ferrell was trying to rob the woman. "I don't believe threats were made," the chief said. Monroe also said he had spoken with Kerrick. "He is pretty shook up," the chief said. "He's devastated." Kerrick has been with Charlotte-Mecklenburg police since April 2011. Monroe said at a news conference that Kerrick was in custody. Police say he was charged with voluntary manslaughter after an investigation found that the shooting was excessive. Two other officers at the scene have been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a probe into the shooting. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 13:48:55 -0600 From: "Joe Gingrich" Subject: The Bay of Pigs' unfinished battle http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will091413.php3 Jewish World Review The Bay of Pigs' unfinished battle 'America needs all the caution its history of misadventures - a record recently enriched by Syria - should encourage.' 'Secrecy makes government stupid by keeping secrets from itself.' By George Will 09/14/13 At 4 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1959, an hour when there were never commercial flights from Havana, David Atlee Phillips was lounging in a lawn chair there, sipping champagne after a New Year's Eve party, when a commercial aircraft flew low over his house. He surmised that dictator Fulgencio Batista was fleeing because Fidel Castro was arriving. He was right. Soon he, and many others, would be spectacularly wrong about Cuba. According to Jim Rasenberger's history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, "The Brilliant Disaster," Phillips was "a handsome 37-year-old former stage actor" who "had been something of a dilettante before joining the CIA." There, however, he was an expert. And in April 1960, he assured Richard Bissell, the CIA's invasion mastermind, that within six months radio propaganda would produce "the proper psychological climate" for the invasion to trigger a mass Cuban uprising against Castro. The invasion brigade had only about 1,400 members but began its members' serial numbers at 2,500 to trick Castro into thinking it was larger. Castro's 32,000-man army was supplemented by 200,000 to 300,000 militia members. U.S. intelligence was ignorant of everything from Castro's capabilities to Cuba's geography to Cubans' psychology. Fifty-two years and many misadventures later, the invasion still fascinates as, in historian Theodore Draper's description, "one of those rare events in history - a perfect failure." It had a perverse fecundity. It led to President John Kennedy's decision to demonstrate toughness by deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Rasenberger writes that, three weeks after the April 1961 invasion, Kennedy sent Vice President Lyndon Johnson to Saigon: "Johnson's assignment was to deliver a message to [South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh] Diem that the United States intended to fully support the South Vietnamese effort to beat the Communists." (Thirty months later, the United States was complicit in the military coup - regime change - in which Diem was murdered.) The Bay of Pigs led to Nikita Khrushchev's disdainful treatment of Kennedy at the June summit in Vienna, and to Khrushchev being emboldened to put missiles in Cuba. In 1972, the Bay of Pigs made a cameo appearance in the Watergate shambles, which involved some Cubans and Americans active in the invasion. On the June 23 "smoking gun" Oval Office tape, Richard Nixon directs his aide H.R. Haldeman to urge the CIA to tell the FBI to back off from investigating the burglary by saying, "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing." Surely this "thing" should be studied as deeply as possible. Unfortunately, the CIA, which you might think had made every mistake possible regarding the invasion, is now making another. It is resisting attempts to force the release of the fifth and final volume of its official history of it. This autumn, a federal appeals court is expected to hear arguments about disclosing the document written in 1981 by CIA historian Jack Pfeiffer, who retired in 1984 and died in 1997. The National Security Archive, a private research institution and library, is arguing that no important government interest is served by the continuing suppression of a 32-year-old report about a 52-year-old event. The CIA admits that the volume contains only a small amount of still-classified information. It argues, however, that it should be covered by the "deliberative process privilege" that makes it exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act. The argument is that, for some unclear reason, release of this volume, unlike the release of the first four volumes, would threaten the process by which the CIA's histories are written. Supposedly candid histories will not be written if the writers know that, decades later, their work will become public. This unpersuasive worry - an excuse for the selective censorship of perhaps embarrassing scholarship - is surely more flimsy than the public's solid interest in information. And the government's interest. In his 1998 book "Secrecy: The American Experience," Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that secrecy makes government stupid by keeping secrets from itself. Information is property, and government agencies hoard it. For example, in the 1940s, U.S. military code breakers read 2,900 communications between Moscow and its agents in America. So, while the nation was torn by bitter disagreements about whether Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs committed espionage, the military knew they had. But it kept the proof from other parts of the government, including President Harry Truman. America needs all the caution its history of misadventures - a record recently enriched by Syria - should encourage. Since the Bay of Pigs, caution has been scarcer than information justifying it. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 14:14:40 -0600 From: Larry James Fillo Subject: Re: Canadians reduced to stone age weapons for self-defense ... ...by gun laws- Digest V15 #923 On 2013-09-14, at 3:52 PM, Cdn-Firearms Digest wrote: > Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 09:29:12 -0700 > From: j davies > Subject: I don't care who you are, that's funny > > I don't care who you are, that's funny... > >> It is believed the cougar, a three-year-old male, died from spear >> injuries, but a necropsy will also be performed on the animal to >> determine what may have prompted it to jump on the woman. >> > Duh. > > Could the first clue be that a cougar is a predator and kills and eats > things that are weaker than it? That's what they do. That's how they > were created. Could it be that without weapons, humans become > just another menu item on the predator's list? > >> One B.C. conservation officer is marvelling at the man‚s bravery for >> attacking a cougar with nothing but a spear. > > And the reason he had nothing but a spear? Thank you, Liberal Party. Don't forget to thank the "Progressive" Conservative Party of Brian Mulroney whose restrictive, bureaucratic, invasive procedure for legally acquiring a firearm has meant many, especially in more remote areas, have given up applying for a licence. A spike in mauling and killing of men, women and children by wild predators followed. Since the Harper Conservatives have decided to endorse and maintain 100% of C-17(1991) and 98% of C-68(1995), they wear the *results, too. *(this includes the High River RCMP raids) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 15:19:39 -0600 From: Larry James Fillo Subject: Re: Cdn-Firearms Digest V15 #924 "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"- Lord Acton Government agencies do abuse their powers from time to time. In a liberal democracy, they are shamed and held to account and ordered to respect the rights of the citizen. In a police state they aren't. They don't even recognize the concept. On 2013-09-15, at 1:17 AM, Cdn-Firearms Digest wrote: > Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 18:47:00 -0700 > From: Todd Birch > Subject: re: gun seizures in times of natural disasters > > The precedent was set when police and “black ops” > contractors went on a campaign of firearms seizures in the aftermath of > Hurricane Katrina, allegedly to prevent anarchy on the streets. > > If you can forgive my mixed metaphors and analogous references ..... > > Someone high up in the stable of the RCMP took note and had a flash > vision of grandeur to emulate this travesty for a major “guns > off the streets” score and the flood in southern Alberta was his > vehicle. But just as it did in the Katrina incident, it backfired and > now the race is on not to be the last man standing with traces of GSR on > his hands. > > My guess is that some low ranking scapegoat will be hung out to dry as > was the case following the infamous UBC pepper spraying of lawful > protestors under the direction of “Strangler” Chretien, > assuming that an internal investigation will be launched to satisfy the > mob. The Sr. NCO/IC took the rap for that one. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 16:37:33 -0700 From: j davies Subject: How fascist are the new anti-gun nuts > How locavores are the new gun nuts [law abiding gun owners are the Jews of the new millennium, as pilloried by A Potter, pathetic Goebbels wannabe] > By Andrew Potter - September 12, 2013 > http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-11639-what-a-great-article-to-highlight > -an-idea-that-is-.html > > We all know the typical face of right-wing gun nuttery, from the local > camo-clad yahoos in a pickup with a gun rack and jacklights all the way to > Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, who blamed the Sandy Hook school massacre on > violent films and video games and called for armed officers in every school. > But there's a new gun nut in town...loose shells spilling out of his coat pockets. This hate dripping screed is remindful of the worst excesses of Goebbels and the rest of the hateful National SOCIALIST claque. No doubt he is readying grotesque and overdrawn drawings depicting law abiding gun owners in the way so well known from the Hitler era. One hopes his testicles eventually descend and he can join the adult world. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 12:17:19 -0600 From: "Joe Gingrich" Subject: letter to editor, abused privacy rights letter sent, unpublished http://www.thestarphoenix.com/health/Mandryk+Notion+privacy+eludes/8912480/story.html I read, Mandryk: Notion of privacy eludes gov't, By Murray Mandryk, The Starphoenix, September 14, 2013. In it Mr. Mandryk discussed the loss of our Charter right to privacy through the Sask. health care system and the lack of concern exhibited by those who work within that system including the Minister of Health, Donna Harpauer. Harpauer said, 'government employees should be trusted, and that it would be too onerous for doctors' offices to forward only relevant information to SGI. There was no need to strengthen legislation to protect an individual's right to privacy.' This is not an acceptable answer nor is it an acceptable policy. Harpauer and this govt. should be reminded to practice, as was on one occasion their Leader Brad Wall, the existance of the Golden Rule. Harpauer's job performance is falling short here, as she fails to fully appreciate the privacy rights of others the way she would like her own privacy rights to be respected. Harpauer must find a way to reform Sask. Health's callous privacy rights abusing policy immediately. Yours in Tyanny, Joe Gingrich White Fox ------------------------------ Date: Mon, September 16, 2013 12:40 pm From: "Dennis R. Young" Subject: LETTER TO THE MINISTER OF PUBLIC SAFETY RE: HIGH RIVER ... ...INVESTIGATION LETTER TO THE MINISTER OF PUBLIC SAFETY - SEPTEMBER 15, 2013 RE: HIGH RIVER FLOOD - INVESTIGATION OF PROPERTY SEIZURES http://nfa.ca/news/letter-minister-public-safety-regarding-high-river-seizures-september-15 DANIELLE SMITH'S LETTER TO THE RCMP PUBLIC COMPLAINTS COMMISSIONER - SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 http://www.wildrose.ca/media/2013/09/September-12-2013-McPhail-Letter.pdf NFA'S THIRD LETTER TO THE RCMP PUBLIC COMPLAINTS COMMISSIONER - SEPTEMBER 13, 2013 http://nfa.ca/news/nfas-third-letter-rcmp-public-complaints-commissioner-september-13 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 11:45:27 -0700 From: Capn' ECO Subject: Look familiar?? http://www.torontosun.com/2013/09/15/veteran-battles-hydro-one-over-meter ------------------------------ Date: Mon, September 16, 2013 1:52 pm From: "Dennis R. Young" Subject: NFA SENDS FIVE LETTERS TO MINISTER OF PUBLIC SAFETY CANADA'S NATIONAL FIREARMS ASSOCIATION http://nfa.ca/ Letter To The Minister Of Public Safety, August 30, 2013 Subject: Repeal of Magazine Capacity Regulations http://nfa.ca/news/letter-minister-public-safety-august-30 Letter To The Minister Of Public Safety, September 4, 2013 Subject: Review and Repeal of Firearms Classification lists http://nfa.ca/news/letter-minister-public-safety-september-4 Letter To The Minister Of Public Safety, September 6, 2013 Subject: Repeal of Criminal Code Sections 91, 92 and necessary amendments http://nfa.ca/news/letter-minister-public-safety-september-6 Letter To The Minister Of Public Safety, September 9, 2013 Subject: Repeal of the former Restricted Weapons Orders 1 and 2 http://nfa.ca/news/letter-minister-public-safety-september-9 Letter to Minister of Public Safety - September 15, 2013 Subject: High River Flood - Investigation of Firearms and Ammunition Seizures http://nfa.ca/news/letter-minister-public-safety-regarding-high-river-seizur es-september-15 NFA'S THIRD LETTER TO THE RCMP PUBLIC COMPLAINTS COMMISSIONER - SEPTEMBER 13, 2013 http://nfa.ca/news/nfas-third-letter-rcmp-public-complaints-commissioner-sep tember-13 WILDROSE LEADER DANIELLE SMITH'S LETTER TO THE RCMP PUBLIC COMPLAINTS COMMISSIONER - SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 http://www.wildrose.ca/media/2013/09/September-12-2013-McPhail-Letter.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Mon, September 16, 2013 3:34 pm From: "Dennis R. Young" Subject: CBC - Bear increase spurs call for hunting change CBC - Bear increase spurs call for hunting change Wildlife federation would like hunters to be allowed to kill 2 bears CBC News Posted: Sep 16, 2013 1:23 PM AT Last Updated: Sep 16, 2013 2:02 PM AT http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/bear-increase-spurs-call-for-hunting-change-1.1855904 The New Brunswick Wildlife Federation would like to see measures taken to increase the number of bear hunters in the province. The black bear population in the province has grown by more than 40 per cent over the last eight years. It is estimated there are about 17,000 black bears in the province in 2013 compared with 12,000 in 2003. The wildlife federation approached the Department of Natural Resources last year to request that hunters be allowed to kill two bears on their licence. But Ron Whitehead, the federation's president, said the provincial government turned down that request. "He told us that there was a lot of pressure from international groups regarding the killing and harvesting of bears generally," said Whitehead. "And some provinces, such as Ontario, have done away with their spring bear hunt because of a lot of pressure from anti-hunting groups." While the bear population is increasing, the number of bear licences issued by the province is declining. Last year, fewer than 5,000 bear hunting licences were issued. In the 1970s, the number of licences issued was about 12,500. Dale Robinson, an outfitter with the Tratton Run Wilderness company, says the number of bear licences issued in New Brunswick has traditionally been bolstered by Americans coming north to hunt bear. But fewer of those hunters are making the trip with the American economy struggling. "It's a hunt that you know, that they don't have in the [United] States," said Robinson. "So it was appealing that way, they don't have a lot of black bear down there. "And a lot of states don't have a spring hunt. So it's a very affordable hunt, they like the meat." Bill Coleman, who attended the Atlantic Hunting and Fishing Expo in Sussex on the weekend, has been hunting most of his life. But while he's seen many bears in the wild, he's never taken aim at one - nor is he about to. "It was one of those things that probably most of the people I hunted with, bear never seemed to be on our list for some reason." ------------------------------ MONDAY, MAY 6, 2013 - CANADA'S NATIONAL FIREARMS ASSOCIATION MEDIA RELEASE WHY IS IT OKAY FOR CANADA TO IMPOSE A "TRAVELLER'S TAX" ON U.S. TOURISTS? Law-abiding Americans have paid the bulk of the $25 million that Hunters and sport shooters have paid to bring their guns into Canada since 2001 http://nfa.ca/news/why-it-okay-canada-impose-travellers-tax-us-tourists ------------------------------ Date: Mon, September 16, 2013 3:38 pm From: "Dennis R. Young" Subject: QUOTE OF THE DAY "If we can just pass a few more laws, we could all be criminals!" -- Vinnie Moscaritolo, American computer security expert http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Vinnie.Moscaritolo.Quote.FDA2 WHAT DO YOU THINK? Rate this quote! Click open the quote you wish to rate, and enter your comments. Did you miss yesterday's quotes? Click here: http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/DailyQuotes ------------------------------ Date: Mon, September 16, 2013 3:45 pm From: "Dennis R. Young" Subject: BBC - Amber Hill: Sixteen-year-old British shotgun superstar BBC - Amber Hill: Sixteen-year-old British shotgun superstar Stuck for a gift for your daughter's birthday? Why not try a shotgun? By Ollie Williams, BBC Olympic sports reporter http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/shooting/24102032 Stuck for a gift for your daughter's birthday? Why not try a shotgun? It worked for Amber Hill. The Berkshire 16-year-old's turquoise painted nails lightly grip an Italian gun customised with her initials, and it has changed her life. Hill holds the world record for the youngest-ever winner of a senior World Cup in her sport, and is now gunning for more at this year's World Championship in Peru. Her compulsion to customise the gun, rare among top competitors, is one of the few signs she is still a teenager. "I was at a party and everyone was talking about what they were doing next year," says Hill during a training session at a range near High Wycombe. "People were saying they would go to sixth form, college, stuff like that. I said, 'shoot for GB.' Taking up shooting has changed my life." It could have been hockey, which Hill played at county level. It could have been gymnastics, ice skating or netball, all sports she played for years. But with her grandfather's help, Hill has become a shotgun prodigy in the sport of Olympic skeet. "When we first started, we used to go out at the weekend and have a bet on it," says grandad Bill Rogers, who introduced Hill to shooting as a nine-year-old. "I'd say, '£50 if you beat me.' It was never happening. Then I went out one afternoon and she took £150 off me - after that, bets were off." Hill has only recently turned 16. Much of her staggering recent success came at the age of 15, including winning a senior World Cup - unheard of for a competitor so young. "It's massive. It's so difficult to compete in a senior category and win," Olympic shotgun champion Peter Wilson recently told BBC Sport. "Everyone in the shooting community is thrilled and also stunned by her performances, She is a phenomenal performer under pressure. We are all really excited by her progress." Wilson's journey to Lima for this week's World Championship made for unlikely headlines, but Hill has now reached a level where she has the opportunity to reshape her sport's public profile in a lasting and meaningful way. "Shooting has been very male-dominated," says her mum Joanne, who knew nothing of the elite sport until Amber progressed under her grandfather's supervision. "If they can see Amber, a young, up-and-coming girl doing it, I think maybe it would bring more girls into the sport and hopefully they can build from that. "Amber has only been doing this particular discipline for the last year and, within a year, she's already got to number one in Britain, number four in Europe and sixth in the world. "I feel like she's still Amber, a normal child at the end of the day, but we've been to places we've never dreamed of going. Acapulco, Dubai, Italy, Cyprus, Finland - what an experience at her age." And as shooting relies more on mental aptitude and discipline under pressure than athletic performance at your physical prime, Hill could theoretically have decades left in her sport. "I feel like I can make a living out of shooting," she says. "It's something I love and I'm going to take that opportunity - do it as best I can, get as far as I can. "The women I shoot against are normally in their 20s or 30s. They're quite a bit older than me, but I have nothing to prove because of my age. I'm young, I'm up-and-coming, I'm going to go and do my best. Age doesn't come into it, it's on ability and how you do on the day. "Rio [2016 Olympics] is my aim. I went to London 2012 and it was the most amazing experience - the scale of it. I knew from then, that was exactly what I wanted to do. I just hope it happens." Her grandfather has made the trip to this week's Worlds and will be filing reports back home to Bracknell, where Amber's mum will be nervously waiting for news alongside her son and the family dog. "I just enjoying watching her," he says. "I sit there and live every shoot. I'm standing there thinking, 'Shoot it! Shoot it!' The old stomach's churning. "I think she can go to the top - but being her grandfather, I would. She's just a natural shot. The first time she picked up the gun, I could see she could shoot. But you've also got to have the package - the discipline, the general attitude, and the will to win, to say you're not interested in second or third. "It's the same as motor racing: you don't remember who came second or third but you do remember Michael Schumacher. "Seeing what she's done in the past year with her titles, her gold medals and everything, I very much hope they'll remember Amber." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, September 16, 2013 9:48 pm From: "Dennis R. Young" Subject: Our inner cities became the safest places. Let's export ... ...urban safety Our inner cities became the safest places. Let's export urban safety DOUG SAUNDERS, The Globe and Mail - Last updated Sunday, Sep. 15 2013, 9:41 PM EDT http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/what-canada-can-offer-the-worlds-m ost-dangerous-cities/article14314857/ Have you heard about Chicago? It's murder city, they say. Every week there seems to be some especially grisly, often racially charged, multiple gang murder there. Or what about Toronto: Shootings, stabbings, beatings - even a guy murdered in the food court of the Eaton Centre. These sound like dangerous places. Except that they're not - not even close. Chicago, in fact, is an exceptionally safe place; it is enjoying its lowest murder rate since 1963. If you list the most murder-prone cities in the United States, Chicago doesn't make the top 25; it's safer than much smaller cities such as Harrisburg, Pa., and even many rural areas. Toronto? Even more so: In terms of your odds of being murdered, mugged or sexually assaulted, it's the 52nd most-dangerous city in Canada. Toronto, in fact, is the least crime-ridden of any census metropolitan area in Canada. Why do we believe North America's biggest cities are dangerous when they are, in fact, among the safest places in the world? In large part, because it was once true: For most of the 20th century (and a good part of the 19th), our big cities really were dangerous. Murders, muggings, armed robberies and sexual assaults were big-city phenomena, and the way to escape physical danger was to move away. Today, the opposite is true. If you really want to find murder city, you need to get out of North America. The most violent cities in the world are places that used to be small and peaceful, but have very recently become huge cities. And no wonder: The cities of the Southern and Eastern hemispheres are doing today what our cities did a century ago: Absorbing huge, formerly rural populations. In 50 years, Kinshasa has grown from 500,000 to 8 million people; Istanbul from 900,000 to 12 million. And with these sudden transitions from subsistence rural life (where families are isolated, and men and women have fixed and inflexible roles) to urban life (where those structures disappear and the old stabilities are replaced with new freedoms) there are often terrible risks, especially for women. The forces that turned New York, London and Chicago into highly violent places in the 19th and 20th centuries - inward migration, municipal corruption, unfinished infrastructure, weak and militaristic policing - are now at work on the other side of the world, not long after we've finally found ways to overcome them. Is it time to start exporting these techniques? That's the subject of an important new study commissioned by Canada's International Development Research Centre and Britain's Department for International Development. "The twenty-first century," it concludes, "is witness to a crisis of urban violence." The two billion people becoming city-dwellers are facing the "urban dilemma" - they realize that moving to the city is an improvement in their lives by most known measures, but it does expose them to greater risk and danger. So while urbanization has cut world poverty in half and lifted billions out of starvation, the hives of crime and danger in the city are preventing the next step into prosperity: "This dark side of urbanization threatens to erase its potential to stimulate growth, productivity and economic dividends." By no means is this inevitable. Cities are not naturally more violent: Yes, Caracas and Cape Town have horrendous murder rates. On the other hand, very densely-populated cities such as Dhaka and Mumbai have rates below their national averages - they are actually safer places to live than the villages migrants are leaving behind. In poor countries, and here in the West, the really huge cities are often much safer than the small and medium-sized ones, where the real corruption and danger lie. In India, which has been galvanized by a rape crisis in the fast-urbanizing north, new research shows that rates of sexual assault and rape remain higher in rural areas. And we have learned from Brazil and South Africa that big, bold interventions can make dangerous cities safer. So we know that urban violence is a temporary, reversible phenomenon. What can we offer? First, good policing: In most countries, urban police are simply branches of the national army, often deeply corrupt. Turning cops into local residents and social workers is a crucial development. Second, good institutions: Our cities became safe when their governments, courts and transit systems started working. And third, good design: Crime happens in those unwatched, unowned empty spaces. Filling them in with fully owned housing makes streets safer. When we create pride in ownership in our cities, we create an appetite for safety - something the whole world wants. ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V15 #926 *********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca Moderator email: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca FAQ list: http://www.canfirearms/Skeeter/Faq/cfd-faq1.html Web Site: http://www.canfirearms.ca CFDigest Archives: http://www.canfirearms.ca/archives To unsubscribe from _all_ the lists, put the next four lines in a message and mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-digest unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat unsubscribe cdn-firearms end (To subscribe, use "subscribe" instead of "unsubscribe".)