Another Perspective on Violence and Guns

It's injudiciously phrased, so take that as a warning, but consider this article.
67% of firearm murders took place in the country’s 50 largest metro areas. The 62 cities in those metro areas have a firearm murder rate of 9.7, more than twice the national average. Among teenagers the firearm murder rate is 14.6 or almost three times the national average.

Those are the crowded cities... with the most restrictive gun control laws and the highest crime rates. And many of them have been run by Democrats and their political machines for almost as long as they have been broken.

Obama won every major city in the election, except for Jacksonville and Salt Lake City. And the higher the death rate, the bigger his victory.

He won New Orleans by 80 to 17 where the murder rate is ten times higher than the national average. He won Detroit, where the murder rate of 53 per 100,000 people is the second highest in the country and twice as high as any country in the world, including the Congo and South Africa. He won it 73 to 26. And then he celebrated his victory in Chicago where the murder rate is three times the statewide average....

In 2006, the 54% of the population living in those 50 metro areas was responsible for 67% of armed killings nationwide. Those are disproportionate numbers especially when you consider that for the people living in most of those cities walking into a store and legally buying a gun is all but impossible.

10 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I'm not afraid to mention it anymore. It is an inconvenient truth that the murder rate is 8x for African-Americans and 4x for Hispanics. I have no idea how we fix that. But I do know that trying to reduce violence by changing the gun laws is effective only at the margins. Europeans on both sides of the Atlantic have the same homicide rate, regardless of what laws you put them under. We need to look for our missing keys where we lost them, not under the street lamps because the light is better.

Gun-control advocates, whether they see it in themselves or not, are trying to reduce gun use by blacks. They get pissed because the Red-white Americans won't help the Blue-white Americans out in this. They do not see their own racism.

I think that's a terrible solution. 99.92% of African Americans are not murderers, after all, and deserve the rights of any other Americans to protect themselves.

Grim said...

I'm going to disagree partially, with the point that gun control advocates are really trying to reduce gun violence among blacks. I don't think all (perhaps not even most) gun control is so motivated. I think it comes from two sources:

1) Genuine horror at gun violence against whites, especially children, in mass shootings like Sandy Hook (these are an almost exclusively white phenomenon among killers, and predominantly white among victims);

2) Distaste, in some cases approaching hatred, for that traditional American culture -- especially present the South and the Mountain West -- of which guns are an important part.

That's not to say that the only traditional American culture is gun-oriented: obviously there are cultures within America of long standing that have no such history (I'm thinking especially of urban Jews, since Alan Dershowitz made this reasonable point recently). Still, I think there is an undeniable culture-war element to gun control. The advocates don't like that part of the culture, and want to use the law and the government to choke it off.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I agree with the cultural-tribal aspect of gun control as well - the Blue Americans just don't understand the Red Americans and think there is soething wrong with them. They aren't very conscious of that motive either, but it is what is behind all the chatter that people don't "need" this or that type of gun.

I chose the racism aspect because I think that is the next level down, even further buried. But still true.

Anonymous said...

About 20 years ago, there was a story out about how cities got a bum rap for violence. The story tried to prove the point by comparing London in the 1390's to Detroit in the 1990's. The rate for London was around 119 per 100,000. Laying aside the point that both are cities, then old London must have had too may Saturday night specials and EBRs (\end sarcasm.)

RonF said...

Two things:

1) The Chicago Tribune ran some statistics on the 506 murders within the city limits in 2012. Of those murders where the perpetrator is known or the police have a definite suspect, 82% already have a criminal record. 52% of the victims have a criminal record. Most of these murders are gang members shooting each other.

2) I have a real problem with the phrase "gun violence". It's another rhetorical trick by the left to shift the focus away from the killers and onto guns so they can shift attention away from the policies that they adopted that have basically encouraged the destruction of families and the growth of crime and violence and put it onto the tools.

Consider: in 2011 about 350 people were killed by rifles. Over 500 were killed by hammers and other such things. About 10,000 were killed with cars driven by intoxicated people. Less than that were killed by people using guns. So why don't we talk about "hammer violence" or "car violence"? Because they don't want to take away your hammers or cars.

RonF said...

"... but it is what is behind all the chatter that people don't 'need' this or that type of gun."

The next time someone says that to you, ask them to do a search on "Rodney King riots Korean". What you will see is that when the Rodney King riots hit L.A., the LAPD abandoned their responsibilities and the National Guard took 6 days to restore order. Hundreds of small businesses were destroyed. Of those, 40% never re-opened. But a group of Korean businessmen, who had been targeted by the rioters, took to the roofs of their businesses with shotguns and rifles and protected their livelihoods for days. There were no arrests - it was (and is) perfectly legal under California law. If they had not had those guns they would have lost their businesses.

E Hines said...

It is an inconvenient truth that the murder rate is 8x for African-Americans and 4x for Hispanics.

It occurs to me that much, if not most, of these murders occur, not just in cities, but in the inner cities in particular--places where market capitalism is especially broken, and so those populations see little opportunity to better their lot through...traditional...self effort.

The hopelessness of such an environment, if it does not encourage crime, including violent crime, would certainly seem to reduce restraints against such.

Eric Hines

Kim said...

All of this is interesting, but not the point.
The point is that if only the government has weapons, they have absolute power... and we know what that does. Think Schindler's List, Hitler, Stalin, think Tiananman Square. "The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Of course, it is interesting that the highest crime areas are also the strongest Obama areas....

Assistant Village Idiot said...

RonF - another trick is to include gun suicides in the "gun violence" statistics. That is more than half the deaths. Suicide is not particularly influenced by gun availability, but you can count those puppies and make firearms look twice as dangerous.

douglas said...

I think these (the party affiliation issue and race issue) are actually very important points, but at this:
"Think Schindler's List, Hitler, Stalin, think Tiananman Square."
I am prompted to link to a speech you really must see and read.