In Part 1 and Part 2, I sagely took the dim Ms. Cruz to task for her cheerleading effort regarding a rather dated and discredited Kates and Mauser op/ed.Today, we have some fun with points from the Mauser/Kates op/ed the hapless Ms. Cruz parrots without question. First up:
In another instance, the study compares the U.S. with Russia. It cites that once the Soviet Union succeeded in disarming the majority of civilians, beginning in the 1960s murder rates skyrocketed. By the 1990s murder rates had become so high that the basically gun-less Russia was left with the highest murder rate of the civilized world, three times higher than that of the U.S., despite the country’s long-standing strict and stringent gun control policies.
See the trick here? Kates/Mauser pretend there was no difference between the Soviet Union and Russia of the post-Soviet era. In reality, crime in the Soviet Union was fairly low for a number of reasons. Punishment was draconian for even relatively minor offenses. Additionally, one could be imprisoned merely on suspicion of being a criminal or hooligan.Third, the Soviet system demanded its citizens to inform on those who might be engaged in criminal or anti-Soviet activity--under punishment of the law.
Nor was the Soviet Union "gun-less," especially in rural areas where hunting was encouraged. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the late-1980s, crime did soar because there was a power vacuum and laws were either not enforced or lightly enforced.
Next:
In addition, England’s most recent crime statistics have been grossly misrepresented. In 2006 the criminal justice system, in an attempt to conserve resources, initiated a policy in which the police would no longer investigate “minor” crimes, such as burglary and minor assault. If a mugger, robber, burglar or others engaged in minor criminal activities are caught, the police simply give them a warning – a virtual slap on the wrist – then send them on their way, without filing charges, arresting or prosecuting them. In other words, crime has not gone down in England, but rather “minor” crimes are simply no longer counted as crime.
This is what is known as a lie. We can easily dispense with Ms. Cruz's lie by looking up Burglary in the UK. Here, we see that burglary--depending on degree and intent--is punished just as severely or more so as the US. What Ms. Cruz is apparently confused about is a "minor crime" statute enacted several years ago which allowed minors (under 18) committing "minor crimes: (such as graffiti) to pay a fine if they have no previous criminal record.
Next up: suicide.
