Re: status of PL/I as a viable language

["John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net>]

"Preben Randhol" <randhol+news@pvv.org> wrote in message
news:slrnb63urv.1jh.randhol+news@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no...
> AG wrote:
> > Why?
> >
> > The whole point of Heinlein's statement was
> > that having citizens armed means it's a little
> > bit harder for violent types do go violent.
>
> Is this true in USA with 11000 gun related killings per year (if I
> remember correctly)?
>
> > Which seems to jive-in nicely with your signature ...
>
> You apparently haven't grasped it then :-)

Since you have decided to pick the fight...

It perhaps matches more closely with the experience in Australia and the
United Kingdom.

Both nations enacted total bans on private ownership of firearms.

Both nations then watched their firearm crime rates, and their overall
violent crime rates, skyrocket.  They have NO clue why this happened.

Meanwhile, some years back, the small town of Kennesaw, in the state of
Georgia, in the United States of America, passed a local ordinance that
REQUIRED every head-of-household to own a firearm.  While the ordinance was
apparently not taken all that seriously by the locals, Kennesaw nevertheless
saw their crime rate go to zero overnight.

The likely explanation for these observations is simple enough.  When a
cretin decides to commit an antisocial act against a law-abiding citizen,
the cretin must evaluate the likelihood that his target will be armed.  The
calculus is quite simple in those places that have outlawed personal
protection weapons: a law-abiding citizen in those places is known a priori
to be disarmed.  In Kennesaw, the calculus was quite different, a
law-abiding citizen in Kennesaw was now known a priori to be armed and
dangerous.  (The most dangerous armed person is one who does not really know
what he is doing: he is far more likely to shoot to kill.  An armed,
prepared citizen knows that the mere presentation of the business end of a
weapon is sufficient in the vast majority of cases to dissuade a cretin.)
It seems that the cretins who were responsible for the local crime problems
decided that the odds had just shifted against them.