... when I have work to deliver to New Caledonia before knocking off ... but they're asleep in New Caledonia just now. And it's Saturday. What the hell do they need my work on Saturday for??
Browsing google ...
http://www.amcits.com/advisory.asp (from US govt consular services)
Drivers should be aware that the frequency with which motorists run red lights is a serious concern throughout Canada, and motorists are advised to hesitate before proceeding on green.
Youse guys just have no clue what a bunch of scofflaws we are up here, do you? ;) The rules for bringing firearms into Canada are summarized there, too. They're pretty simple looking.
Ah, I see the loony Cdn right wing has adopted your theory ... I am *not* offering this source as an authority on any statistics, mind:
http://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/~ab133/Archives/Digests/v03n200-299/v03.n230.txt(always such a fun site to browse -- oooh, I see this piece is from the reliably obnoxious and right-wing John Robson, a senior member of the editorial staff at one of Conrad Black's former press holdings; and posted by the estimable Garry Breitkreutz, right-wing MP extraordinaire)
American experiments have confirmed this theory. After Florida passed a law allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns in 1987, its murder rate fell 20 per cent while the national rate rose 14 per cent (Florida went from 36 per cent above the average to four per cent below), and handgun-related homicides fell 29 per cent. (There was, however, an upsurge in attacks on tourists because rental car plates were the equivalent of a big neon sign saying "I'm not armed, rob me." Eventually car rental agencies stopped marking their cars.)
Like I said, this is the very first I've heard of this theory, myself.
Well, this is fun, but I'm not having any luck persuading google to give up the goods on this one -- looking for some contemporary discussion of the problem in Canada (i.e. not
post facto discussion, by right-wing loons), and not finding any. So let's do anecdotal for a moment.
Generally speaking, the less wealthy, and the younger, tourists from here drive to Florida in their own cars -- like my parents, and me -- or fly and don't rent cars while there. They don't fly there and then rent cars. The one time I flew, I rented a bicycle. The people in the rental cars are the old folks / folks with the bucks -- and the video cameras and what have you.
The people being victimized were apparently disproportionately people driving rental cars. Not people driving cars with Ontario or Quebec plates -- there being orders of magnitude more of them than of Canadians in rental cars, if we consider just Canadians for the moment. If the "they don't have guns" thing were the reason why they were being targeted, why were not far more people with out of state plates on their own cars being hit? There was an abundance of them so the robbers would have been spoiled for choice. And yet they picked the rental cars.
My theory is still: drivers of rental cars tend to be older and/or richer than your average bear.
And also: if the robbers are smart enough to figure out that Canadians, say, didn't have guns with them in Florida when the law didn't permit them to, surely they can be expected to be smart enough to figure out that
the vast, overwhelming majority of Canadian tourists are not going to have guns with them in Florida even when the law does permit them to -- and that they would therefore all *still* be safer targets, statistically, than the locals, by your theory, even leaving aside my age/wealth theory for the car renters.
Really, believe me, trust me -- my parents and their friends and neighbours and relatives who go to Florida regularly
do not own guns, and are not under any circumstances going to be driving around with guns when they are on vacation in Florida. Nor are I and my partner (who were there last spring), nor are my sister and her partner (who lived there for several months while he attended the famous motorcycle school), nor are my brother and nephew (who were there at Christmas), nor is
anyone else I know who might go to Florida.
I'm sure there are people whom I don't know who might do this; perhaps you have some figures about how many of these permits have been issued to foreign visitors since it became possible?
As far as your out-of-state USAmerican rental-car driving victims -- was concealed carrying of weapons permitted in the states you mention
at the time these events occurred? Do a whole lot of people fly to Florida from Texas or Kentucky or Virginia and rent cars? Seems kind of unlikely to me.
Canadians would be free riders if they were a somewhat less signficant element of the population in question (potential target tourists, for whatever reason). In fact, they represent a huge component of that population. They might rather be regarded as exercising a rather decisive influence on whatever phenomenon is present. If 5 or 6 out of 10 tourists in rental cars can be expected to be Canadian, and therefore almost certainly "unarmed", my guess would be that the very small possibility that the remaining minority is armed, multiplied by the less than 50% probability that the victim would be in that minority to start with, would be less than a major deterrent to anyone considering taking a stab at a tourist robbery.
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