Alaska 2013

[alaskabushman]

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This is was just a week ago on Prince of Wales island in the Southeast panhandle. I think its was 42 degrees on this day.

[1stimestar]

Boys survive a blizzard in a snow cave.
http://www.adn.com/2013/01/30/277119...-blizzard.html

[crashdive123]

Sounds like they had a good teacher. I'll bet though - that in the lower 48 if school was cancelled because it was 45 below - very few would say....Hey! Let's go hunting!

[1stimestar]

IMGP4043.jpg

This is was just a week ago on Prince of Wales island in the Southeast panhandle. I think its was 42 degrees on this day.

Oh that's beautiful. I want to go hiking on the Kenai this summer.

[1stimestar]

Can someone familiar with the country's latest gun-control debate explain Alaska to me?


This is a gun-crazy state. Guns are everywhere. About 58 percent of Alaskans own a gun, according to the Washington Post. Given that the U.S. Census says the average household size in the 49th state is 2.65 people, there is, on average, 1.53 guns per household.


Or to make this simple, there is basically a gun in every house.

Alaska homicide rate dropping
And yet, the Alaska homicide rate for 2011, the latest year for which figures are available, was 4 per 100,000 people. That's significantly lower than the 6.4 per 100,000 people for New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg likes to brag about how many guns the New York Police Department has taken away from the citizenry, and about a fifth of the homicide rate for Chicago (19.4 per 100,000), a city with stringent gun control that has been labeled the world's "Deadliest Global City."


But none of that really concerns the question that begs an answer.


If guns in and of themselves are evil, if more guns means people are more likely to kill other people, why does the death toll for Alaska "firearms homicides" stand at 2.6 per 100,000? Actually, the number is probably lower than that now. The data on specifically how people kill each other -- with guns, knifes, beatings -- dates to 2004, and the Alaska homicide rate has fallen about 25 percent since then. But suffice to say, fewer than half the people killed in homicides in Alaska are killed with a gun.


The state's gun-homicide rate is a low number. At 2.6, your odds of being shot and killed in Alaska are lower than your odds of being murdered in the European principality of Liechtenstein (2.8 per 100,000) and about the same as your odds for being murdered in Luxembourg (2.5 per 100,000). Neither country is known as a hotbed of violent crime.

Swiss mandate gun ownership
Then again, the chances of being killed with a firearm in Alaska -- or in Liechtenstein or Luxembourg, for that matter -- are a lot higher than the chances of being murdered in Switzerland. The death rate there is 0.7 per 100,000, and gun ownership is mandatory for men of military age, some of whom are volatile young men. Some studies in this country have pinpointed men between the age of 21 and 30 as responsible for 40 to 50 percent of all homicides. The Swiss, however, arm them. And they don't only arm them, they give them assault rifles.


"Between the ages of 21 and 32 (all) men serve as front-line troops. They are given an M-57 assault rifle and 24 rounds of ammunition which they are required to keep at home," according to the BBC. The 24 rounds is a government requirement. People can buy more if they want.


(A personal note here. Young men casually handling automatic weapons in train stations and elsewhere in Switzerland always scared the beejesus out of me. It isn't so much that they are armed with automatic weapons, but that their handling sometimes seemed inattentive, even careless. Nonetheless, there do not appear to be a lot of accidental shootings in Switzerland, or at least people dying from accidental shootings.)


The Swiss clearly illustrate there are factors other than the simple availability of guns in play when it comes to violence, death and firearms. And so, it would seem, does Alaska. With all the guns around in the 49th state, why do slightly more people die due to knifings, beatings or other violence -- 3.05 per 100,000 -- than shootings -- 2.58 per 100,000?

Status symbol?
Or maybe the better question is this:


Why is death by firearm so much more prevalent in major U.S. cities, most of which have made it harder for people to legally obtain guns than in the Wild West of Alaska? Wouldn't you think that given gun control in those places, the ratio of knife, beating and other deaths would increase in proportion to gun deaths?


Or have gun bans, helped by pop culture, simply made it something of a status symbol to kill someone with a firearm in urban America?


Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com

Lots of other Alaska related news here that some of you might find of interest.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/articl...-few-homicides

[1stimestar]

Woke up to an unexpected chilly morning!

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The combination of clear skies and a cold airmass has resulted in a chilly morning across northern Alaska. Temperatures of -40° F or colder were reported at many locations from the Interior to the North Slope. Although these readings are below normal for mid-February...no records were tied or broken.

For the latest interior and northern Alaska weather information visit: www.weather.gov/fairbanks

[letslearntogether47]

Wow,that's cold.
We're expecting anoth foot+ this weekend.Looks like it's going to be one of those years here in the N.E.
We've got snow caves also.lol

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/l...s-giant-igloo/

[1stimestar]

Heh, that's pretty cool. I'd like to do something like that one day.

[hunter63]

Is that a "Kee bird" in the pic?

[1stimestar]

Raven, of which we have lots. They also play a large part in Alaska Native culture.

[hunter63]

Ahhhhh....Thought maybe y'all had Kee birds up there.
When it's really cold around here (that's kinda a joke for y'all), the kee birds come out......You can hear their call...."Kee, Kee, Kee-ripes it cold out!"

[1stimestar]

Hahhaha yea I can imagine them saying that. It's funny to see them when it's really cold. They fluff up to a HUGE size.

[crashdive123]

How 'bout that.......I would have thought there would be shrinkage in those temps.

[1stimestar]

Hahah. No comment.

[hunter63]

I think it's the Kee birds that you hear every time there is a film or vid on Alaska........
Like "North to Alaska"....and off in the distance you hear the "Kee", right?

[1stimestar]

Heh, I just found this vid about living in a dry cabin (which I do) and was surprised to see friends and co workers in it.
http://youtu.be/7CILcdkcJL8

[scumbucket]

I'd love to live in Alaska, spent a few weeks on the Kenai peninsula in Soldotna fishing and exploring with my brother who has a guide service up there. Absolutely beautiful, and the people are great up there. She won't leave her grown children in AZ though. Helpless babies need their mommy to take care of them. We had a blast up there, fished for halibut and salmon. I fell in love with the place. I can take the cold, it's everything else that makes it worth while to live there.

[1stimestar]

Well I'm not one to get in between a mamma and her kids, no matter how old they are. But yea, if you move up here together and one doesn't love it, neither one will in the end.

[1stimestar]

We normally do not have wind here in the interior. But March is coming in like a lion for sure. It's a down right blizzard out there. -40 and no wind is doable. -40 because of wind, not so much.
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[rebel]

I'm ready for spring.