Back in the 1990s, the Solomon Islands broke out into a pretty nasty ethnic conflict which only ended in 2003 with the military Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and the Participating Police Force (PPF) which includes up to 30 New Zealand police.
Under the peace accord, almost all Solomon Islanders had to surrender their fire arms.
Now, some five years later, the local crocodile population has boomed, and last week a 10-year-old girl was killed by a crocodile.
The solution, at least for now, is not to rearm the Solomon Island natives (ethnic tensions remain), but to send the PPF in to cull the crocs, which is being done.
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2 comments:
Solomons / crocodile / guns stories have been around for a while. This one (and earlier ones) are not false. But they are misleading.
What any reader need to know is that, historically, the Solomons population did NOT have firearms in any significant numbers UNTIL the conflict began in the nineties.
When conflict broke out, yes, then various sorts of firearms made their way into the rural areas. That is certainly true.
But the important question is -- before the conflict, where there were few guns out there, was the population being terrorized by crocs? The answer is NO.
If you live in the Solomons, and I have (Malaita and Bougainville) you learn to be careful. Certainly some people were taken by crocs. No doubt about that. I knew people with horrible scars from croc attacks. So of course there was danger.
But it's silly and a-historical to relate current croc attacks to the disarmament. It's a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument.
This makes complete sense to me.
Thanks!
"Post hoc ergo propter hoc" arguments occur in which you tease false causality into the facts after an incidence has occured. This kind of reasoning is very common in a lot of debates, but is particularly common in crime, violence and gun debates as well as political analysis.
In any case, the "solution" in the Solomons (if indeed there is a problem) is not to arm everyone to the teeth in an area of conflict, but to shoot the 7 crocs that are a problem. And, as you note, to teach kids to be careful.
If you are in the Solomons, I suspect there are things in the water more dangerous than the crocs -- like rocks, tides, sharks and cone snails. Heck, I bet falling coconuts have killed far more people than crocs!
P
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