On May 25, one year after George Floyd died under the knee of police officer Derek Chauvin, activists, mourners, and neighbours gathered to honour the anniversary — and ended up face-down on the street themselves. Not dying, but diving for cover, as gunshots rang out on the Minneapolis block that has since become known as George Floyd Square.
Chauvin will go to prison for Floyd’s murder, having been found guilty of murder in a court of law, but the sweeping civil unrest that followed the 2020 killing — and which still continues in some spaces unabated — is its greater legacy. Riots and looting left multiple urban neighbourhoods in ruins; more productive forms of protest led to tangible policy change. Punitive bail policies that target the already disadvantaged have been revoked; new laws have been passed restricting the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrants; more states are requiring the use of police body cameras and mandating the swift release of footage when an encounter with the cops results in violence or death.
But at the same time, an unsettling rise in violent crime over the past year threatens to undermine the cause. Last weekend, multiple shootings occurred in various American cities — and media outlets leaped to declare a crisis. “Bloody weekend in America renews call to stop the shootings,” wrote The Times, which pointed out that the “mass shootings” had “brought total number killed by guns in the US this year to 7,601, with an additional 9,504 dying from suicides.”
“America has already endured 230 mass shootings and 13 mass murders in 2021,” said Axios on Monday. Today, the Gun Violence Archive — a non-profit organisation that tracks all shootings in the US — puts the total number of mass shootings so far this year at 232: the California Bay area saw its worst incident since the early 90s in San Jose on Wednesday. Indeed, since the Times story was published on Tuesday, the Archive has tallied up 257 more deaths caused by guns, bringing this year’s total to 7,858 — or, if you include suicides, 17,626.
Crime and policing have become so fraught, so politicised, that despite the need for urgent action, productive discussion on these topics is a rarity in America. And no issue better illustrates the unbridgeable divide than the debate over gun violence. At one extreme is the gun enthusiast, a card-carrying member of the NRA who owns dozens of weapons — as is his inalienable right, according to the second amendment — and mocks the sissy libs who want to take them away. At the other is the blue-state pacifist, who has never held a gun in his life but nevertheless would like to abolish them entirely, including taking them out of the hands of police. In between them is a landscape littered with bullet casings and dead bodies that both sides shamelessly use as props in an endless, seemingly unresolvable debate about who’s to blame: the guns, or the people using them.
“What’s clear, as the president has said, is that we are suffering from an epidemic of gun violence in this country,” said the White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre in response to events in San Jose, “both from mass shootings and in the lives that are being taken in daily gun violence that doesn’t make national headlines.” But if you look behind the headlines, the distinction she draws is blurred. CNN, whose headline read, “There were at least 12 mass shootings across the US this weekend,” included a pivotal disclaimer a few lines in: “CNN defines a mass shooting as an incident with four or more people killed or wounded by gunfire — excluding the shooter.” This definition also stems from the Gun Violence Archive, which interprets a mass shooting as any incident in which at least four victims (not including the shooter or shooters) are shot and either injured or killed.
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SubscribeThere is just one tinsy winsy little problem. A lot of those Middle America right wingers are enjoying the show because IT DOES NOT AFFECT THEM IN THE SLIGHTEST. Violence is skyrocketing in America’s progressive cites and has hardly changed a bit in rural America and flyover country. Even as the economy struggled and crime went up, little of it was violent crime. It has seriously been a wonderful bit of schadenfreude to watch panicking white suburbanites clear out gun store shelves after they smugly told us no one ever needs a gun and now find out much hassle those supposedly “reasonable” laws are.
I appreciate the argument Mrs. Rosenfield is trying to make and I understand that she wants Americans to come together to solve problems. The problem is that it does not affect both halves of America equally. In rural America and flyover country we are surrounded by guns and ammunition, well over 400 million of them in fact. Just to let that sink in, there are only about an estimated 150 million guns in circulation with the worlds militaries and that also means there are more guns than there are people in America. Many of them are so called scary “assault weapons,” which are just semiautomatic rifles and no, they have existed for well over half a century now. There is nothing new about them and despite what the Left would have you think, they are very rarely used in crimes. If you think you can just ban them and they will go away, you are dreaming. See as far as Middle America is concerned, why would they change things if they A, like their guns, B, strongly believe in the right to self-defense, and C, see few examples of their misuse?
Now compare that to many of America’s cities. Drive byes, gang shootouts, and carjackings are common. Gun control is strict and useless. Hardly anyone is doing background checks. Violent criminals are often just allowed to go free. I do not want to be mean, but I am just tired at this point. Leave us alone and deal with your own problems.
Very good point: “The problem is that it does not affect both halves of America equally.” Large cities and flyover country have different situations that require different policies. Trouble is that a lot of things you might want to do to deal with this kind of problem cannot be done locally, as long as guns, taxpayers, shoppers and workers can move freely between jurisdictions. Which is why violence-plagued cities cannot ‘leave you alone and deal with their own problems‘.
As for “Violent criminals are often just allowed to go free”, the US already has the highest incarceration rate in the world (of countries with reliable statistics) and is notorious in Europe for its harsh punishments. Don’t you think putting even more people in prison might get you into diminishing returns?
But violent criminals are often allowed to go free in the US. Indeed, they were released on to the streets during Covid – and they wonder why homicides etc are through the roof. The problem is that the jails are full of people who were put away for years and years for committing two or three minor drugs offences, largely due to the 1990s Crime Bill authored by Joe Biden.
Giving harsh sentences to minor drug offenders while letting violent criminals walk free. I mean when you put it like that, the American criminal justice system sounds kind of insane doesn’t it?
“IN Uk they lock up the victims and free the criminals’. Put like that UK justice seems insane, but that is because the statement is NOT true, and your statement is also untrue.
“The problem is that the jails are full of people who were put away for years and years for committing two or three minor drugs offences,” This is really myth. There used to be ‘Habitual Offender ‘ laws, and ‘Three Strikes and you are Out’ laws, but this is not the situation now, it takes a lot to get hard time.
That is false. The three strikes and your out law refers to felonies, not misdemeanors. Drug offenses that are classified as felonies are possession with the intent to sell. Possession for personal use is a misdemeanor and do not fall under the three strikes law. And there are no non-violent drug dealers. Selling deadly drugs to addicted people is a violent act. Coercing 14 year old to use drugs so they become addicted is a violent act. Drug dealers should go to prison for life on the first offense.
I know a lot of people are in prison in California because they counted low level theft in their three strikes. A lot of non-violent addicts found themselves serving long sentences over it. On the other end of the scale I know of places like Chiraq (local nickname for Chicago, let it sink in) where criminals who committed serious violent crimes were let off with a slap on the wrist. At the end of the day American prisons are full of many people who need rehabilitation and at the same time we have a lot of violent criminals who need to go to prison until they are old and grey.
You state that the violent gangs in the cities travel to more rural areas on a regular basis in order to commit crimes, which is totally false. Contrary to your assertion, the ‘violence-plagued cities’ can leave alone and for the most part they do. The violence is very localized, even within the cities so the problems can be addressed locally. It’s just that their is no will to address them. Meanwhile, The rich white liberals stay safe in their nice neighborhoods while voting for policies that guarantee the never ending deaths of poor black people.
You misunderstand me. I take it as given that the violence is indeed localised. The remedies are another matter. One solution might be to make it hard for teenage gang members to get guns – but that is impossible as long as guns are easy to get just outside the city. Other solutions might require money – i.e. higher taxes, which is impossible as long as the taxpayers can just run away to the suburbs where rates are lower. Meanwhile people outside the cities still share in the advantages the cities offer, from jobs to wealth creation to centralised services.
I entirely take you point that the rich white liberals are insulated from the inner-city violence – just like the rural republicans are. What I doubt, and what you would need to argue for, is that a republican mayor or governor could solve the problem of violence, given the economic social and racial situation the city has. In short, cities do not have crime because they vote Democrat – they vote Democrat because they have the voters, economy, and social situation they have, which also leads to higher crime.
They aren’t getting them outside of the city! That would require a background check, and if in another state, them shipping the gun to an in-state gun shop where you would be required to pass your state of residence background check. They are getting them out of the back of a van. Something like 80% of gun homicide in Chicago is committed with an illegal firearm not bought in a gun shop.
I bow to your superior knowledge. I was thinking more in the abstract. In Europe you can make it quite hard for gang members to get hold of guns, because there are no good sources nearby. As long as guns are freely available in the next state over, it must be in practice impossible to keep them from moving to where people want them, legally or otherwise.
Fair enough. I’ll conceed that we are heavily armed. Just not that being heavily armed = high crime. I don’t think that the illegal guns are following the same channels as legal guns, though I’ll concede I don’t know the stats on that. It would be interesting to know how many formerly legal guns have the regstration numbers filed off and end up on the black market as opposed to how many enter the country, say, from a cartel sneaking them over the border.
I doubt that many guns come from abroad. Who would produce them? Very few countries have the laws of the USA, which allow any fool to buy a gun.
Mexican cartels import guns over the border. Also, there are background requirements here, so no, “any fool” cannot buy a gun. My heavily armed neighborhood has low crime. Violence hs class and cultural roots. Those who aren’t brave enough to face those uncomfortable truths focus on gun ownership and ignore the statistics.
But where do the cartels get the guns?
Cartels get guns wherever they want to get guns. Sure they get some guns from the United States like handguns, and some rifles. They already have the smuggling and distribution network for drugs. Might as well bring some guns across along with your profits. Hell, the United States government even encouraged it. Look up Operation Fast and Furious some time for a beautiful feeling of outrage. As for the cartels they are also rocking GPMG’s, assault rifles, RPGs, grenades, and I think even a few MANPADS. Hint, you will not find those in a gun store.
Also to clarify a few things. FBI statistics have shown that most inner city crime is not caused by guns out of state. Even with strict gun laws most are obtained locally and those that are not were often stolen and trafficked. Most gang members use cheap, lower quality handguns. Killings with rifles, including so called “assault weapons” only number less than 5% of gun deaths (I’m pretty sure the number is lower but I do not have the statistics in front of me). The reason for this is that they were often straw purchased, and because you are going to ask, no they are almost never prosecuted.
Well Obama gave them quite a few under operation Fast & Furious. Research it.
Are those background check requirements not what Texas is now removing? Or did I misunderstand that?
Texas is now the 20th state to remove its statewide requirement to obtain a permit to carry a concealed firearm. I can argue both sides of that, but one thing is true: These laws have NO bearing on background checks or legal eligibility to possess a firearm.
That is one more thing I have learned from this debate. Thanks.
Of course – it had to be the mexicans! There we go, now we know who is to blame.
I wish we all could be that insightful…
If it’s a Mexican cartel, yes it’s probably Mexicans. Would you expect a Mexican cartel to be run by Thais?
There are many gun producers around the world and if you have money you can buy.
The laws of the USA do not “allow any fool to buy a gun.” You clearly know nothing about our laws.
I don’t think there is an IQ requirement for gun buying. I could be wrong.
In western Europe even illegal guns are quite hard to get. It is possible (of course) but it takes some serious criminals, with contacts. That cuts down on both shootings and suicides. Just to say that it is possible to reduce illegal guns, at least as long as legal guns are not too common. Admittedly it is kind of hard to see how the US could ever get there from the current starting point.
Just for fun, a couple of UK anecdotes:
There are some advantages to living in a low-gun society.
“There are some advantages to living in a low-gun society.” Tell that to White South Africans. If they have no gun they are done. If USA was unarmed it would be completely lawless, life would be like Venezuela.
“In western Europe even illegal guns are quite hard to get.”
not these days. Most of the illegal guns in Europe, which law enforcement, particularly in France and the UK recognize, come from Eastern Europe or the Middle East and North Africa. Criminals can get illegal guns, don’t kid yourself that they can’t.
“There are some advantages to living in a low-gun society”
If you don’t want to own a gun, yes.
“Just to say that it is possible to reduce illegal guns, at least as long as legal guns are not too common.”
One doesn’t have much to do with the other unless you have some evidence that shows that lots of legal guns are being sold to criminals. Your assumption appears to be that all guns start as legal weapons and then become illegal weapons. But there isn’t any evidence for that.
If you are a criminal with contacts abroad or to other connected criminals, of course you can get weapons. Anything else would be a miracle. The point is that if you are a random teenager who wants to be a badass it is much harder. And if you carry that weapon around with you, you can get arrested for it. That does cut down on the spontaneous gun duels – and keeps the police less edgy when doing stop-and-search.
My assumption is that you cannot make it hard for the wrong people to get guns unles you make it a bit harder for everybody. For a random suburban teenager background checks might well be enough. But whatever the trade flows are now, it just does not sound realistic to do much about the supply of guns to gang members, as long as the country is awash with legally held guns.
“The point is that if you are a random teenager who wants to be a badass it is much harder. And if you carry that weapon around with you, you can get arrested for it. “
It probably used to be much harder but not these days. And if you carry an illegal gun around with you in the US you can get arrested for it as well.
“My assumption is that you cannot make it hard for the wrong people to get guns unles you make it a bit harder for everybody. “
Yes I know that’s your assumption but the reason it’s incorrect is that all guns do not begin as legal guns. The vast majority of gun crime is not committed with legal guns.
if only those Charlie Hebdo employees had been as brave, eh? Is it better to be killed by a suicide bombing, though?
How do you explain a place like Switzerland, where nearly every household has at least one legal firearm?
Violent crime – including gun crime – in the US is very highly concentrated in large urban, mostly Democrat-run centres, like St. Louis, Minneapolis, LA, Baltimore, and (notoriously) Chicago. It is not correlated at all with rates of legal gun ownership.
Take away all the crime in those places, and you’d be left with a violent crime rate similar to that of most European countries.
In civilian guns per head you have
1) US 120 guns, 7) Canada 35, 10) Finland 32, 14) Austria 30, 17) Norway 29, 19) Switzerland 28, 22) Sweden 23. Switzerland is not that unique for civilian guns, apparently (though they do send military weapons home with their army reserve). Do you have a reference for your ‘every household has a gun’ quote – not that it matters enormously? In Sweden, as it happens, well over 90% of the firearms are rifles or shotguns – long guns.
For people to shoot each other , you need a shooter and a gun. Guns alone are clearly not enough. On the other hand you can surely avoid a number of homicides and suicides if people do not carry guns around, and they are hard to get hold of in a hurry when you feel like using one. You would need to do something about the most violent cities and neighbourhoods independent of gun control, no disagreement there. On the other hand I believe suicides in Europe diminished significantly as countries switched from (poisonous) city gas to (non-poisonous) natural gas, and poisonous drugs became harder to get hold of; the same would likely happen if you reduced the number of guns. Even if you managed to pacify Detroit there could still be gains from having fewer guns – not that I think you would be interested.
Rasmus, you haven’t read or reproduced your source correctly. It doesn’t show ‘guns per head’ (as anyone seeing your statistical breakdown of guns per country must surely have realised*) but ‘guns per hundred people’. I’m not saying that this destroys your argument, with which I largely sympathise, but – get the numbers right.
*It should leap to the eye that the average individual in the USA couldn’t possible own 120 guns!
Oh Shoot! That is the kind of thing where you just miss what you are actually writing, because you know what you really mean. Of course it is guns per 100 people.
Thanks for correcting it.
You also know nothing about the dynamics of suicide.
Yes, exactly. It’s not legal gun owners shooting people, that’s where Rasmus makes his mistake. He seems to believe that 16 year olds in Detroit (who cannot buy a gun legally anyway) are driving around suburbia purchasing guns from legal gun owners. So if legal gun owners lose their guns, somehow that Detroit teenager won’t be able to get a gun. That’s seems to be his theory anyway.
Whereas you seem to believe that legal guns with legal owners are totally isolated form illegal guns with illegal owners, and somehow you could take the illegal guns away form the illegal people without any of the easily available the legal guns ever migrating to the wrong users. To me that sounds like emptying half a swimming pool of water – without putting in a divider. But we are unlikely to agree on this.
“Whereas you seem to believe that legal guns with legal owners are totally isolated form illegal guns with illegal owners”
yes
”, and somehow you could take the illegal guns away form the illegal people without any of the easily available the legal guns ever migrating to the wrong users.”
yes. Although unless you lock up everyone using an illegal gun in a crime, eliminating the illegal guns won’t work. What we have to do is eliminate those who use guns in crimes. But essentially yes, there would not be a market for legal guns suddenly opened up to criminals if illegal guns were hard to get. Legal gun owners want their guns. They don’t have them so they can sell them to criminals.
I assume you’ve tried <G>
If someone wants to commit suicide lack of a gun will not stop them.
True. Japan has a very high rate of suicide with few legal guns.
As I’ve posted elsewhere, there is an example of a Muslim terrorist who wanted to do a killing spree and armed himself with a knife. Also of a criminal group who went to great trouble getting hold of and transporting a single-shot converted starters’ pistol. Anecdotal, yes, but a pretty good indication that it is not that easy to get hold of proper weapons.
Of course. But making it harder and more time consuming gives people more time to change their mind. Fewer people kill themselves (or others) that way.
This is your error: You are thinking in the abstract, with no knowledge of our laws or the practicalities involved. The comment about guns being available “in the next state over” is the tell here. You abstracted something that, in daily reality here, is barely relevant.
It’s a big country, so there are always exceptions. Criminals have their channels, but they are not the ones you have abstracted.
Would it be fair to say that as of now it is quite easy for anyone who can pass a background check to get (legal) guns? And that it is also quite easy for anyone who cannot pass a background check to get (illegal) guns – at least in the places where a lot of people want them?
My guess is that insisting on legal guns being easy to get is connected to the other kind being easy to get as well. Or, if you like, that it would be impossible to remove access to illegal guns while keeping legal guns easily available – even if the two supply routes are separate for now. But I’ll admit that it is rather academic, since there does not seem to be a lot of push for making either change?
Anyway, thanks for answering. I still prefer to live in a disarmed society, but I am at least less ignorant than I used to be.
If you can pass the check (look up Form 4473 if you are interested in the details), then it’s easy except in the worst anti-gun states with more restrictions.
How hard is it to get illegal guns? Hard to answer definitively. My guess from what I’ve read and heard is that it’s similar to other criminal activity. “Easy” for a criminal in the abstract, but not necessarily “easy” in real life given all of the various impairments most criminals have. (Drugs, stupidity, poverty.)
Removing access to illegal guns is, to me, like crime-fighting in general: a never ending task, pursued in the twilight. Two certainties in the real world.
First, no one will succeed in confiscating them. There are roughly 80 million lawful gun owners here, with 450 million firearms and at least a trillion rounds of ammo. Suffice to say that there would be resistance.
Second, no gun control scheme that I know of has kept firearms from criminals who want them. Even background checks have no impact on the availability of guns on the street among criminals, or so I have read. By definition, criminals don’t care about the laws.
You lot have been quite convincing, but I would still add that there are arguments, US arguments, that suggest that illegal weapons do flow from states with lax gun laws to states with strict gun laws. It would be interesting to hear where you think those illegal guns are coming from.
>70% of guns used illegally come from within the state where they are used. And again, it’s illegal to go to another state and buy a gun that would not comply with the home state’s rules.
An illegal firearm in the US? I didn’t realise there was such a thing.
Perhaps you need more information than you appear to have.
“One solution might be to make it hard for teenage gang members to get guns – but that is impossible as long as guns are easy to get just outside the city.”
Because teenage gang members are known to travel far and wide looking for guns? And no one in places where legal gun ownership is high would notice this?
No gang member in Chicago is buying a gun anywhere but Chicago, which is awash in illegal guns. Why would any criminal have to leave Chicago to locate an illegal gun? It would be a top location to buy one.
The point is that there would be no hope of emptying Chicago of illegal guns, as long as they are cheap and plentiful just outside town (not that I am aware that anyone is trying). With eager buyers and simple (if illegal) supply, the market would take care of the rest.
No one is leaving Chicago to obtain an illegal gun though. If you wanted to obtain one, you’d GO to Chicago. Illegal guns are not cheap and plentiful in suburbia.
There aren’t people roaming around suburbia trying to buy illegal guns. You’re missing the key. The illegal guns are awash IN Chicago, not outside of it.
You seem to believe that if Chicago were somehow emptied of illegal guns (which would require emptying it of criminals too) that legal gun owners in suburbia would set up yard sales and sell their legal guns to criminals from Chicago. But legal gun owners want their guns.
You cannot really understand much until you grasp the difference between legally owned guns and illegal ones. Understand what criminals are committing gun crimes with.
There is no difference between cities, suburbs, and rural areas when it comes to legal gun availability. All purchases of new guns are accompanied by a federal background check, and in blue states with state-level checks on used guns, these apply statewide.
It is illegal to cross state lines to make a gun purchase that’s not legal in the buyer’s home state. Also, any gun that’s sold and then shipped — new or used — must be accompanied by a federal background check before it can be picked up. These rules apply in all 50 states.
In practice, the armed criminals (mainly in the cities) typically get their guns in the city, on the street, from other criminals. Thus, illegal guns are actually more available in the cities. As a rural resident with legally purchased firearms and the requisite array of state-level permits for carrying a concealed handgun, I can confidently say that someone not known to a seller would have a significant degree of trouble in finding a legal gun owner willing to transfer a gun to a stranger outside of the well-known legal channels.
That challenge would be especially tough in the countryside, where everyone tends to know everyone else. There ARE rural criminals, for sure, but the practicalities are aligned against them. If I were a criminal in search of illegal firearms, I’d head to one of the big cities where we used to live.
Most of the people who yammer about all of this don’t even begin to know what they are talking about.
The problem is not that they are rich, but that they are Leftists and cannot help themselves because of ideological possession.
True, and it’s even localized in cities. I lived in Chicago in a very safe neighborhood about one mile from a neighborhood with daily shootings. Night and day within one mile.
Almost all cities are like that. We lived in St Louis, which is having a gun-killing thing right now. I can tell you the exact location where the nice white people live, and the exact street where the change happens.
It’s not always white neighborhoods. I’ve lived in mixed race neighborhoods that were low crime too, but they were more often working class.
Sure. BTW, I’m from Arlington Heights, so know something of Chicago. And, yes, plenty of mixed race areas. Let’s be clear – it’s more class than race. Many on the lower class are black, many blacks are in higher classes.
Agreed. Class and culture.
And I was born in Evanston. 🙂
Gangs in the inner city ALMOST NEVER travel to rural areas. They may travel to inner ring suburbs, but not out into the country.
Yes, I got a chuckle at the idea that no one would notice inner city gang members roaming around rural areas looking for guns.
Inner city criminals are mostly terrified of rural areas, with their trees, grass, cows, and gun-totin’ rednecks, and would never venture into them voluntarily.
And for good reason. Try it in our county, and it’ll be a one-way trip.
Incarceration rate is a meaningless figure unless you also consider crime rate. The US rate of the one is high because so is the other.
Yes but sometimes Europeans think that committing a crime, having a trial, being convicted, etc. are not required before one gets incarcerated in the US.
Rasmus, you are a great poster, but you just fail to understand USA. I am originally from London, so know USA from both sides, and have lived all over – and what you Europeans do not understand is….
USA IS DANGEROUS AS THE UNDERCLASS ARE VIOLENT. Middle Class Americans are more law abiding then British. Crime in Middle class areas, and country, are safer than UK. The Crime comes from certain classes.
If you reduced the prison population you would have a big rise in crime, USA has TOO FEW in prison actually. You look at USA with glasses of European lenses, and they utterly distort the reality. USA is a mix of third world kind of areas mixed near Blue Collar, and Middle Class, and Wealthy. I recommend you watch the sanitized version of the rougher side of USA by watching ‘The Wire’ and a couple of the Netflix/Prime documentaries on Poor Rdeneck towns in West Virginia, or poor Hispanic sections of LA or El Paso.
What you just do not understand is USA is a mix, and like most mixes it is stratified, and as long as you remain in your strata that is what you get.
You could be right – as you say I do not know the USA so I could not tell either way. I am certainly not making any policy proposals. I cannot but wonder, though. The US already has more people in prison overall than any country with reliable statistics – third world included. If most of the prisoners come from a few strata, the incarceration rate for those people must be even higher. And unlike, say, China, all those prisoners are not enough to ensure law and order. How many prisoners would it take to bring inner-city crime down? If you doubled the prison population, what would it actually help? It may be, as you say, that there is no other way of managing, the way things are. But one would sort of hope that it might be posssible to find a strategy that led to better results than the current one.
“The US already has more people in prison overall than any country with reliable statistics”
and? What is it you think this signifies?
“How many prisoners would it take to bring inner-city crime down?”
well, it would require imprisoning anyone who commits a gun crime and not letting them out.
“But one would sort of hope that it might be posssible to find a strategy that led to better results than the current one.
You’re assuming that leaders in US cities with lots of gun crime want to stop it but where is the evidence for this? Like you do, most Americans look at US cities that are violent and shake their heads, happy that they don’t have to live in them. People get the lifestyle they vote for. If you want to live in fear of being shot, well, you get to do that. Vote for someone like Bill deBlasio and you can live surrounded by violent criminals.
Those “poor redneck towns”, as dysfunctional as they are, still have nowhere near the violent crime rate – or at least the murder rate – of large inner cities.
In our rural county, there’ll be one murder every couple years. Almost always among meth users.
“Large cities and flyover country have different situations that require different policies”
why would policies have to be different? Seems like a policy (actually a law) that punishes gun crime would work in large cities the same way such policies/laws work in “flyover country”.
“…the US already has the highest incarceration rate in the world (of countries with reliable statistics) and is notorious in Europe for its harsh punishments. “
Well, Europe is notorious in the US for its leniency and shocking lack of harsh punishment for even the most diabolical of crimes, eg. sentencing mass murderer Anders Brevik, who killed over 70 people, most of them teenagers, to a mere 20 years.
If we had a much higher crime rate than you, that would suggest that maybe we should try to imitate you. As it is, you have a much higher crime rate than we do. Of course it is not so simple, the number of crimes probably depends mostly on other things. But does your approach really work so well that you want to double down on it?
“If we had a much higher crime rate than you, that would suggest that maybe we should try to imitate you.”
You don’t have to have a high crime rate to incarcerate criminals. You just have to be willing to incarcerate those who commit crimes. Wouldn’t preventing anyone who commits a gun crime from doing so again bring the crime rate down?
Yes, that was truly shocking that people would accept a sentence like that as adequate.
“Don’t you think putting even more people in prison might get you into diminishing returns?”
how can putting people who commit gun crime in prison lead to diminishing returns?
Coming from a country that doesn’t allow any idiot to buy military grade weapons I just wonder if you have any concept of how backward and retarded America looks from here with its gun ownership laws?You know what real freedom is? Its the freedom to know that you can go to school or walk down the street without being murdered by a mentally ill 16 year white supremacist toting a machine gun.
You’re talking out the back of your head. First you cannot buy military grade weapons in the US. So called assault semi-automatic rifles are nothing more than regular rifles dressed up to look bad ass. Second, the suburbs and countryside in the US is incredibly safe, and a good deal more so than many areas of London, for example. Crime is generally localized to the cities, and specifically to certain neighborhoods which is indeed a tragedy.
You are coming from a country where the govern executes decent people for having a different opinion, creed, religion or ethnicity. It has to be very safe there. The problem is not the “White supremacism” it is gang related activity, culture, as it was mentioned in the article, and fatherlessness. Reality matters more than ideology.
When communists took over my country, as long as the population had weapons, commies could not take over the country. After they disarmed us, we were under their boot. I hope that you understand the concept of freedom better, as long as you live in the West (as it seems)!
Is this what you think most of America is like? I thought non-American’s were supposed to be more enlightened? This would be like me posting that I don’t want to go to Italy because I fear getting hit in the face with flying pizza dough being thrown by a mustached guy named Luigi in a stripped shirt while singing Amore.
Switzerland has the highest gun ownership in the world .As I presume they don’t use chocolate bullets , its what you use the guns for- hunting in the rural areas-that counts. In the cities they seem to use their illegal guns on other people for target practice.
Statistically you have much more chance in the US of being eaten by a shark, struck by lightning, or dying from a dog bite, than of “being murdered by a mentally ill 16 year white supremacist toting a machine gun.”
As the entertainment industry is run by cosmopolitan types , they transfer their secret fear of being made to live in the countryside onto their programmes. There are endless films and fictional TV such as Knight Rider Mattlock etc who when the hero comes to the one-horse-town is treated badly by the sheriff ( who seems to be in control of everything) usually locked up , the people are depicted like something out of Deliverance & obviously this fictional version of small time America has taken shape as reality in people’s minds
Ah, a lecture from China. Enough said. LOL
A lot of those Middle America right wingers are enjoying the show because IT DOES NOT AFFECT THEM IN THE SLIGHTEST. This says more about you than it does about them. There are no “right wingers” who enjoy the ongoing carnage, especially when kids are among the victims. Come on, man. Do you get excited about violent death in other places?
The sum total of your argument is that the problem is not guns, it’s people and culture, but we’re not allowed to talk about those things.
I very much would like the discussion about people and culture. As you observe, the gun isn’t the problem. But, as always, we arrive at the discussion about guns – how easy or hard to get them.
What’s clear, as the president ( Biden) has said, is that we are suffering from an epidemic of gun violence in this country,”
He should have added “in the blue states” if he were honest, truly wanted a solution and America to come together on this.
But of course he didn’t.
It’s not even the blue states, it’s the blue cities. But the people in those cities keep voting for it and they wouldn’t want it any other way.
But of course you didnt actually look at any statistics did you James and just waved your red hat in the air instead.
• Mass shootings by shooter’s race in the U.S. 2021 | Statista
The whole point of the article was that it acknowledged those statistics of a particular form of shooting but that as a proportion to overall gun violence they were relatively insignificant.
A similar thing happened here with the Dunblane tragedy. Instead of having an enquiry* , there was a sudden decidion to ban legal guns. This meant that the olympic team have to travel to France to practice , but the illegal teams can practice on whom they want. * As it became apparent this man should have had his license taken away-there were enough complaints for the police to do this-never explained why these complaints were ignored.Obviously legal gun owners can suddenly act ‘crazy’ & kill people-they usually then kill themselves.
I don’t think you read carefully the article. Gang related activity causes a “discrete” genocide.
That graph is totally irrelevant to what James said: it does not address which states had the highest level of gun violence, just the race of the killer in a tiny proportion of the gun crimes committed in the USA.
You’re like a politician in an interview, who, when asked one uncomfortable question, ignores it and answers another, more congenial, one.
It’s a pity that when you looked at the data, you didn’t bother applying even the simplest analysis.
At its most basic, the chart you cited demonstrates that while the black community make up less than 20% of the US population, they commit ~30% of the mass shootings of whites.
Blacks are 12% of the US population in fact.
Your link says 53% of mass shootings (not defined) were by white perpetrators. That makes white shooters under-represented – a lot more than 53% of America is white.
Aside from the relative under-representation of Whites in mass shootings, your reference does not account for the more numerous deaths from shootings that are not mass shootings. In that case, you will find the more massive numbers associated with “inner-city” populations.
Or, Zac, you never learned to read a report without checking its provenance. If it’s easier for you to understand, I’ll put it this way: see if you can predict the political preferences of ‘Statistica’, the company whose information you quote, by having a good old look at their media partners.
America has spree shootings that make headlines – and yes male, but not always white – but the deep problem is black victims of black shooters in (often US democrat run) cities – shootings that kill a disproportionate number under 18s (so children effectively). So far this year Chicago to 21st May has had 865 shootings, 195 murders and 658 sexual assaults.
This report is from this week – 21 shooting incidences on Wednesday. Absolutely terrifying for someone living in Europe. https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/5/27/22456250/2-killed-17-wounded-shootings-wednesday-may-26-chicago
Unfortunately the issue of guns is a U-shaped curve. Either no-one has them to be safe, or if bad guys have them, then everyone believes they need them to feel safe, and rural America is pretty safe. To protect Black American’s lives, reducing the terror of gun violence against Black Americans by other Black Americans would be the place to start.
“So far this year Chicago to 21st May has had 865 shootings, 195 murders and 658 sexual assaults.”
yes. And they keep electing people who won’t stop it. It’s tough to feel much sympathy for them.
What are your solutions?
End the war on drugs. It is the root cause of much of the turf war gang violence that takes place in cities, and it increases the number of encounters between people and police that lead to the George Floyd type incidents.
On top of which, lots of guns get exported from the US to Mexico to arm the drugs gangs, with dire results – “black goes south and white comes north” as the Grateful Dead put it.
Oh please, the PKMs, RPG-7s, and Colt M4A1s with M203 grenade launchers were already there.
if you take the right of the people to keep and bear Arms seriously, surely every well-regulated US militia should have them too.
Even if all street drugs were decriminalized and regulated the way alcohol is now, there would still be massive amounts of unregulated, illegal drugs on the streets, and people killing each other over them.
The killing isn’t caused by the buying, selling, and consumption of drugs, and the enforcement of laws against them; if it were, the murder rate would be just as high in the many parts of poor rural America where drugs are epidemic.
First solution would be to move to someplace where the criminals are not in charge. Which many people do. Second……Anyone who commits a crime with a gun needs to be locked up. It’s very hard to commit another gun crime while in prison.
I thought you would say some like this, first you blame them electing the wrong people and then suggest they should just move instead, perhaps a bit impractical for everybody. Then the autoritarian solution of just trying to lock up as many people as possible. Do you not think, as mentioned above, that ending the war on drugs might make a difference?
Not only do I suggest people move away from poorly managed crime-ridden cities, they are actually doing it, if they can.
if you commit a crime with a gun, yes, you should go to prison. Not sure how that is locking up as many people as possible. You’d still have to commit the gun crime. What would you suggest happen to those who commit gun crimes?
Exhibit A would be NY before and afyer Rudi Guliani and his zero tolerance policy. Thar way you up the risk to commit crimes. Human beings, even criminals are risk sensitive, and will adapt their behavior accordingly (as happened in NY. Singapore is also a good example.) There is also a cultural cause that is more complex. Something like 75% of black inner city children grow up fatherless, no positive male figure, but lots of gangs to take that role. Lousy school systems that don’t make an effort to educate then because math is racist or some such nonsenae. Really terrible cultural role models like rappers and hip hop singers who glorify crime and irresponsible behavior. The welfare system.perpetuates this environment.
Between 70% and 75% of black children are born out of wedlock. But it gets worse: Between 40% and 45% of black children are born into a household without even a cohabiting father, as in “no father’s name on the birth certificate.”
What do you mean by “ending the war on drugs?” Be specific.
Moving is exactly what we did 3-1/2 years ago, from Seattle to the WA State countryside. No one could have predicted the events of 2020, but the response of that city’s so-called leadership did not surprise us one bit.
‘To protect Black American’s lives, reducing the terror of gun violence against Black Americans by other Black Americans would be the place to start.’
But you can’t do that because it would be ‘racist’.
Yes, I occasionally follow the weekend death toll as reported in the Chicago Tribune and it is unfailingly depressing.
I used to skim read the physical Tribune (there were hundreds of pages) every Sunday lunchtime, my favourite time of the week during my two years in Detroit. I was able to chill out in a fine Mongolian restaurant, where the white guy frying my food wore a green T shirt declaring: “Proud to be an Irish Mongolian”, and read about part of the weekly slaughter 250 miles to the west (as if downtown Detroit, 20 miles to the east, was not bad enough).
I dimly recall 57 casualties one particularly bad Chicago weekend – 11 dead, 46 wounded, from late Friday to late Sunday.
And the mayor of Chicago’s response to this violence is decreeing that she won’t grant personal interviews to any reporters that aren’t black or brown. WTF. We see her priorities.
The most expeditious way to do which is to jail as many black Americans as possible. I am not sure how many you’d have to jail but it could be most of them.
Absolutely not. What is needed is help for the black American community to stand up to thugs and violence, to spike the tumour within. It cannot be imposed from outside. It needs leaders who can build the community forwards as successes and winners, not as victims dependent on external largesse.
Wouldn’t removing the criminal element plaguing the black community be a better solution? Would you suggest any white community stand up to thugs with guns? This is a law enforcement issue. Remove the criminals so peaceful non-criminals can live unmolested by thugs.
In my rural county, the crime rate is low. A major reason is that would-be criminals are quite aware that the large majority of people out here are gun owners. People occasionally ask me what my home defense gun is. I reply: “Which room?”
I would almost feel sorry for the drug addict who makes the mistake of thinking that we are sitting ducks. I hope it never happens, and I have little fear that it will, but if it did, my biggest problem would be cleaning the rug. LOL
“And in the meantime, whatever it is that’s causing Americans to kill each other at a nearly 20% greater rate than they were at this time in 2020 will continue to cost lives.”
yes. In democrat run cities. Gun crime in the US doesn’t happen all over. While it’s sad to see it explode in blue cities, most Americans simply aren’t affected by it – it doesn’t happen where they live. There may be plenty of guns around them but not much crime committed with them.
Cities like NY and San Francisco and Minneapolis really should ask themselves why they are covered up with crime while other cities are not. What is it that they are doing differently that leads to high gun crime rates?
‘What is it that they are doing differently that leads to high gun crime rates?’
They are voting for Democrats.
Well yes and the people who commit gun crime get a vote. They may just be out voting the people who don’t want to live in crime ridden cities. People like that just tend to leave if they cannot afford the security or gated community.
Life is so simple is it not. Vote Republican and everything gets better! You can’t be that naive can you??
It got better in NYC when they voted in a Republican mayor. Now they have a democratic mayor and guess what????.
“Whatever it is.” Hmmm; has anything happened since this time last year that might have contributed to the spike? Couldn’t have anything to do with months of rioting, a ‘defund’ movement, DA’s refusing to prosecute, eliminating bail, or a thousand other things done by the elected class, almost all of those being Dems.
I have seen that widely discussed. Crime has rocketed in US cities that have defunded the police. Further the escalating violence in certain US cities (we know which ones!) has resulted in more people buying guns to protect themselves.
Interesting article. The byline is “Nobody wants to tell the true story of gun crime in America.” Even the author of this article confines herself to describing the phenomenon and how America’s political camps manage to talk past each other. Unravelling the causes of gun violence would require a much longer article, I’m sure.
America is hopelessly divided. Gun violence is just one in a long list of important topics the left and right can’t meaningfully discuss. Biden might succeed in partially restricting gun ownership, and if the republicans are reelected they’ll try to dismantle his reforms. Nothing will truly change until America finds common ground as a society again.
“America is hopelessly divided. Gun violence is just one in a long list of important topics the left and right can’t meaningfully discuss”
if you mean divided in the sense that only part of the population bears the brunt of gun crime, yes. But I have to disagree when you say the gun violence is not discussed in the US. Gun violence is continually discussed in the US. I think we could agree that people don’t necessarily agree on solutions but we cannot say that it isn’t discussed.
One place we could start would be in looking at US cities that do not have a lot of gun crime and determine what they are doing that’s different from cities like SF, NY and Minneapolis. It would not take Biden to help these cities, they have the power to tackle gun crime themselves just like every US city with little gun crime. In addition, Biden can’t dispense with the 2nd amendment,
That is an interesting idea. Can you give a list of large American cities with little gun crime? My guess would be that they are too different from SF, NY and Minneapolis in terms of economic situation, wealth, and racial mix, for the difference to be transferable. But it would be worth looking at.
The ones with low levels of gun crime tend to be those that are run by Republicans. Of the top 20 most violent cities, 18 are run by Democrats. The solution is to stop voting Democrat because the inevitable consequence of their belief system is high levels of crime.
And there are no other differences to note between high- and low-violene cities? Size? Wealth and wealth distribution? Racial composition? Economy? Presence of ghettoes?
Absolutely there are differences. San Francisco, Washington DC, and NYC are the three wealthiest cities (highest cost of living) in the US, and are among the worst (with Chicago, Detroit) for crime. Why? These are also the cities with the widest income gap between rich and poor. And these are deeply Progressive cesspools. The policies of the decades of Democratic government have created the conditions – including wealth gap – that produce unrest. High taxes drive out the middle class, and over-regulation drives out small businesses, leaving behind the rich who are insulated from the problems, and the poor who can’t get out. And the Donkey politicians are stoking the racial and economic divide on a daily basis. BLM and antifa, that are both anti-democratic, anti-liberty, violent organizations, are not merely permitted but abetted by the local Donkeys. And with no viable opposition, these fools have no incentive to resolve problems. So the people get the government and crime they deserve.
Best way to cut crime: end the war on drugs.
Tell me more: What are the biggest low-violence cities in the US, and how do they look? What are the chances to make NYC or DC more like them? It would be useful to have a working example of how to do it, for comparison.
We already have a working example – NYC under Rudy Giuliani vs Bill de Blasio. It’s not like we don’t know what works and what doesn’t. We know that letting criminals roam the streets invites crime. We know that not prosecuting lesser crimes leads criminals to commit greater crimes. We know that stop and frisk works. We know who commits gun crime – its not middle aged women. It’s young men. When you see case after case of young men with criminal histories miles long, someone isn’t doing their job. You don’t see this in more peaceful cities where people expect to live unmolested by gun crime.
Peaceful cities where people expect to live unmolested do not have lots of young men with long criminal records. That is undoubtedly true. It is less obvious how to get rid of those young men, once they are there – or better how to stop producing so many of them in the first place.
It takes more than one example without controls to establish what works – how did the crime rate change in other cities that had neither Giuliani nor de Blasio?
“That is undoubtedly true. It is less obvious how to get rid of those young men, once they are there”
It is much tougher to commit additional gun crimes from prison. It seems like repeatedly allowing them to commit crime after crime may not be the best way to handle things.
Since you specifically asked about NYC, I gave you an example of how to lower violent crime and make the city more livable in NYC.
I actually did some work, and checked out the stats. If you order US cities by violent crime, Washington is 24th, LA 32nd, San Fransisco 37th, New york 59th, The highest rate of violent crime is in St Louis , Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Cleveland, all of which are indeed Democrat.
Of the 20 biggest cities, the lowest violence is in Austin, San Jose, and San Diego, all of which also have Democrat mayors.
The biggest cities with Republican mayors are Jacksonvile (52nd in violence), Fort Worth (57th in violence) and Oklahoma City (30th in violence), all doing worse than New York,
I do not know enough about the US to make this into a coherent story, but it looks like it might be a bit more complicated than just ‘Democrats=violence’.
Culture plays the biggest role. When you look at places with low educational attainment, high rates of single parenting, long-term unemployment and intergenerational poverty you see high rates of gun violence, whether it’s Appalachia or the inner city. I lived in a heavily armed yet very safe city in Texas and also lived near an incredibly violent neighborhood in Chicago with strict gun laws. The cultural elements above were present in the latter and not the former.
Sounds right. Thanks.
Blimey! Someone on this site did some research, instead of just parroting their prejudices. Thank you!
Rasmus, look by racial makeup, there you will find your answer.
OK, My top seven violent cities are all in the top 25/100 for black population percentage. Next, however, you get Stockton, Albuquerque, Indianapolis, Oakland,San Bernardino and Anchorage, before you get to Nashville, New Orleans, and Minneapolis.
I wont even think about making conclusions about race in the US.
Until this year the mayor of San Diego was a Republican.
“The biggest cities with Republican mayors are Jacksonvile (52nd in violence), Fort Worth (57th in violence) and Oklahoma City (30th in violence), all doing worse than New York,”
in 2020, there were 178 murders in Jacksonville vs 436 in NYC, so NYC is worse. In 3020, Ft Worth had 112 murders compared to 436 in NYC, so NYC is worse.
Come on! Jacksonville has ca. 900 000 inhabitants, and NYC has 8.6 million. Do you really not understand why you get more crime committed in a city with a nine times larger population?
And do you really not understand the population demographics?
Hmm. Someone skipped his arithmetic lessons. LOL
Someone did – but is it me or Annette?
My calculation is simple:
Jacksonville: 178 murders, 900 000 inhabitants, ca. 200 murders per million people
NYC: 436 murders, 8 600 000 people, ca. 50 murders per million people.
Conclusion, Jacksonville is about four times more violent than NYC, by this count. If I got it wrong, or you have a better calculation, could you please tell me?
I think that it is important to establish the proper causal links: the large income gaps cause violence, or violence causes poverty, or (as it is very likely), it is a circular connection. What can break the cycle? By cultural norms, good education, honesty (If you can face it, you can fix it) – but Democrats are more concerned about the image of minorities than to tackle honestly the deep seated cultural problems.
There are Black conservative leaders who speak up, and therefore marginalized. I am talking about Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Candace Owens, etc.
To what extent is income gap causative or merely relational? Income gaps may correlate with crime, but some percent of people with low incomes are there because of unsavory tendencies. The income gap argument is often used as an explanation, but I doubt its validity.
This is true of so many statistical analyses. People are very keen to assume that correlation means causation, but forget that it can run in both directions, or that the apparent link may be caused by a third factor (like the famous ‘ice cream causes drowning’ example).
I doubt it (gun crime) is caused by any income gap, but rather the lack of opportunity in many of these communities. When whole industries have been gutted or displaced, leaving every member of a family with no work, with not having the resources to leave, the only options are some form of the dole or crime.
Those would all be caused by Democrats’ obsession with race as well.
Cause and effect?
Is there a bias here though since most US cities are Democrat-run? Not criticising your point. I’d just be interested to know
If you look at NYC, when it was run by a Republican, crime fell, including violent crime, under democratic leadership as it is today, violent crime is sky rocketing.
Of course, it’s all about Rep Vs Dems. Explains everything, doesn’t it?
“My guess would be that they are too different from SF, NY and Minneapolis in terms of economic situation, wealth, and racial mix, for the difference to be transferable.”
You seem to be making the case that guns are not the problem. That poverty makes people commit gun crime? That would be tough to prove since millions and millions of poor people don’t commit crimes. How do you see race fitting in? Since you brought these up, you must believe they have some bearing.
Getting rid of guns would certainly help. People would still be violent, but you kill fewer people, and a lot fewer innocent bystanders, if the violent are limited to using knives or fire extinguishers instead of firearms.
For the rest, you hear it from other debaters. Violence is a lot larger in big cities, and even in particular neighbourhoods. I am sure there are a lot of differences here, wealth, race, culture, family structures, social capital, attitudes, job opportunities, education, drug use, housing, you name it. What happens depends on all those things, and they all interact. It makes no sense to pretend that there is only one single cause, or that a single set of policies would work the same everywhere. Whatever policies work to provide low crime in Honolulu or Stockholm, there is no reason to think that they would work the same in St Louis.
”Getting rid of guns would certainly help.”
I agree that getting rid of illegal guns would but since gun crime isn’t generally committed with legal guns, how would that help?
“Whatever policies work to provide low crime in Honolulu or Stockholm, there is no reason to think that they would work the same in St Louis.”
on the contrary, locking up anyone who commits a gun crime works no matter where you do it.
Jennifer (above) quoted her very peaceful and heavily armed community. Only one murder in living memory – the wife who came home to her hsuband shagging a neighbour and shot them both. Just possibly, might three people have been much better off if the returning wife had not had a firearm to hand?
For the rest, I continue to think you are dreaming if you think you can keep criminals disarmed while legal guns are easily available everywhere.
Yes, you think that because you believe that criminals are buying legal guns from legal gun owners. And they aren’t. If you want to buy a gun illegally, you would do that somewhere there are a lot of illegal guns. Like Chicago.
Like Jennifer I live in a very peaceful community and lots of people here own guns. Since we already have almost no gun crime, forcing people who are not committing gun crime to give up their legal guns would not do a thing. And because there is no supply of illegal guns available here, young urban men don’t come here to buy them. They know quite well where to obtain one. In fact, we all know where they’re getting them.
All of the info is available. If you actually care, go check the numbers for Chicago, and then compare them to San Antonio.
Violent crimes per year per 100 000 people:
Chicago: 1099
Houston 1095
San Antonio: 708
New York: 539
San Diego: 367
All five are large cities with Democrat mayors, I believe.
What was I supposed to conclude?
‘Biden might succeed in partially restricting gun ownership,..’
Yes, among the law abiding. The criminals, meanwhile, will have all the guns the want, and the Democrat DAs etc will fail to prosecute them and/or put them back on the streets with ‘no cash bail’. Thus the number of killings will continue to increase. That’s the Dumbocrats for you.
This begs the question, why is it that the criminals will have all the guns they want? Could it have something to do with the fact that the country is awash with guns? Could it be that a serious (properly determined, crisis level, massive use of state resources à la vaccine rollout) attempt to do something about this would be the single biggest thing you could do to reduce gun violence?
Yes, but that would require going after the black market for guns instead of tightening background checks, as illegal handguns are used in the vast majority of gun homicides. We are indeed awash in guns available from the back of a van. When Democrats start talking about cracking down on this illegal market I will take their gun control rhetoric seriously, but I’m not holding my breath because that would require jailing a good number of their voting base.
If you have 400 million guns and 300 million people, and the law abiding aren’t allowed to own them, only criminals will.
Not to worry – once currency becomes digital and your phone is your wallet every second of your life will be tracked, every cent you spend, and crime will become very hard, in the nu-Police state you crave.
“why is it that the criminals will have all the guns they want?”
well, it’s because other criminals are willing to sell them illegal guns. You may be making a common mistake in thinking that all guns in the US start life as legal guns that are then sold by legal gun owners to criminals. But there’s no evidence for this. It isn’t legal gun owners selling guns to criminals, it’s other criminals doing so.
The Left like restrictions, the Right prefers proper education, but as long as the Left pushes Critical Race Theory, do you think real unity can happen? Ben Shapiro was right that the Overton Window needs to be pushed to the center, because the entire press is left leaning (Tim Groseclose, Left Turn) and it alienates a large portion of the population.
Why should a Republican give up his right to own a weapon, when Democrats, Antifa and BLM creates chaos in the country? Perhaps folks in Europe cannot comprehend that some people actually care for their lives and do not wish to die by the hands of anarchists.
Americans look with dismay at the grooming gangs in Europe (especially Britain), where Pakistani men raped and traumatized British women for decades and the brave men of Britain didn’t move a finger. The police was more afraid of being labelled racist. This is the level of abnormality!
Plus,in Britain the criminals seem able to obtain guns yet the rest of the population are just evulnerable. Soft policing, preference for monitoring people on the internet and light sentencing of violent crime all contribute to growing violent crime. Knife crime and even machete attacks now occur. Huge immigration has also broken down community relations and trust particularly in cities as studies have shown .
It’s difficult to know really when crims have real guns or not. One hears rumours… but by their very nature even legal gun owners are discreet about it and Illegal gun owners must be massively so.
I suspect it’s a case of knowing people who know people, if I had the power to order a police raid of their homes I doubt I’d find a gun there – it’s somewhere close by they can get their hands on it but still deniable.
Soft policing is a large part of it too, basically the police don’t get brave with people who’ll fight back – they’ll turn up later camera crews in tow protesting “injustice” or crying racism about how they were “unjustly targeted”.
I understand what you are saying, and am grateful the UK doesn’t have what looks like an unsolvable problem to me. I also take the point about the abuse of young girls in some cities; the police didn’t react properly, thanks to perceived public opinion, but the left-wing opinion creators eventually had to retreat, and the police now deal with such problems, although that’s not to say the same fear of being labelled racist isn’t even more pronounced elsewhere since the current ridiculous copying of BLM ballooned here one year ago.
While reading the article, the situation which came to mind as being most similar in the UK is the waxing and waning of ‘stop and search’. In its absence, use of knives (with regular murders) increases and hits the headlines, followed by demands for action. On re-imposition, violent crimes reduce, only to be followed by a campaign of criticism utilising statistics, because it tends to affect young males of colour disproportionately.
This is greatly propagated by parts of the media, including, extraordinarily, the national public service broadcaster. The statistics are, of course, selective, omitting consideration of the local areas and cultures affected, or the activities occurring. Such disproportions also tend to apply to convicted perpetrators, another useful statistic, and to victims, too; not so useful.
Of course care must be taken to expunge racial prejudice from within a police force, but anyone opposing ‘stop and search’ either wishes to carry a weapon, has an ulterior political motive, or is being fooled. I’d also add that encouraging negative feelings towards the police doesn’t help to increase non-white recruitment to the police, or to reduce the idea that they themselves are being stereotyped, or ‘profiled’.
This American owns 16 guns, somewhere north of 30,000 rounds of ammo, and 22 long knives, a couple of which I carry on my belt (one at a time), on the other side from the concealed handgun.
“What are you so afraid of?”
“To be perfectly candid, not too much.” LOL
‘They’ll blame progressive lawmakers for empowering criminals to offend with no fear of arrest, from Chesa Boudin in property crime-plagued San Francisco to Jacob Frey in violence-ridden Minneapolis.’
Well that’s because the progressive law makers are to blame for this state off affairs. They have so much blood on their hands that it defies all belief. They are evil. Another interesting fact is that, apparently, no member of the NRA has ever been responsible for a mass shooting. If true, this is something the MSM will never tell you.
It is all a great conspiracy, the Bilderberg Group‘, The Davos Group, the Donor Class.
Try reading ‘The Creature From Jekyll Island.’
You are just a serf to the global masters, and they use their left and Right to fight amongst them selves to stop the people from unifying and getting rid of them, as they have for thousands of years.
That’s frankly depressing: 4 or more people killed or wounded sounds awful. I’m glad to have been born in the UK. Britain must sound like Utopia to US folk where even our police don’t carry guns on patrol.
It’s the suicides too which seem to get dwarfed in discussions: it must be too easy to pull a gun out of a bedside cabinet in a moment of depression or hopelessness and end it all in second.
Depends on where in Britain, much like it depends on where in the US.
Hello Annette, there were only 12 shooting deaths in London in 2019. In 2014 there were only 4. London homicides are most from knife crime: knives can’t really be banned.
Peter, just wait – it is Coming! You will find the crime grows exponentionally with the EU shifting culture, OR, and this more likely, the combination of digital currency tracking every single penny, and facial recognition and GPS data makes it a Distopia of epic porportions where freedom is gone and you are basically ‘Pets’ of the elites, fed, kept healthy and crime free, given your drugs, TV, AI, VR, and welcome to the Matrix.
Yes,London is a violent city, that was my point. According to the BBC 2020 was the sixth year in a row where violent deaths topped 100.
also the number of people one person kill with a knife in, say, 60 seconds, is much fewer than with a gun.
Well you completely ignored his point about suicide though, which accounts for almost two thirds of American deaths by gun. This problem doesn’t exist anywhere in the UK and in the US I’m not sure if it’s limited to Democrat run cities.
Suicide is fairly common in Japan, unlike guns. Maybe it’s not the object.
It’s not the object but it’s much easier to commit suicide if you have a gun compared to not having one. That’s undeniable and statistics in the US reflect that.
Japan has almost no private gun ownership and yet has a very high suicide rate. So it’s not the gun.
I agreed it’s not the object so I don’t know why you felt the need to make that terrible point. You ignored the other point that I made again, did you even read it?
Suicide doesn’t exist in the UK?
Can’t you just go and comment on some American site
Sure. And I do.
You are deliverately misunderstanding him or you have been drinking!
Most Americans aren’t affected by gun crime. I live in South Carolina in a nice lake community that is heavily armed and there hasn’t been a shooting in a decade. That one ten years ago was a domestic. A woman walked in on her husband sleeping with the neighbor and shot him. So I guess it’s more correct to say my neighborhood is safe providing you don’t have an affair. My husband lived in London and then Marlow in his 20’s and experienced the same level of gun crime, none, that he does here in the States. The only difference is that here the neighbors are all armed. It’s not the guns it’s the culture.
Regarding suicides you are sadly correct. It’s much easier to act on impulse and successfully kill yourself when you own a firearm.
and are largely ineffective. They don’t really prevent or solve crime, they mostly just add up statistics on it.
How does the police carrying guns prevent crime? The only way this could be possible, is if you had such a large armed police presence that potential criminals were deterred from committing crimes. It’s uncertain if it would even work, it certainly is not desirable if you want to live in free society.
I am from London, 40 years in USA, and NO UK is NOT a Utopia! It is dreary, the people are rightly more afraid of crime than Americans outside of the crime neighborhoods (it is safer in 90% of USA than it is in UK). Every thing you do is regulated, there is no freedom except to do the dreary thing –
UK is great to visit, but I would hate to live there. I am there a lot and after 3 weeks I am ready to leave, the entire society is claustrophobic, it is like living in a series of stacked rat cages.
Very interesting comment. I’ve enjoyed my dozen or so visits to the UK, especially when we get out of London, a city with all four cheeks sucked in. I wouldn’t want to live in the UK either, but would honestly say that this is because, in my extensive travels both internally and internationally, I find the U.S., or at least my corner of it, and lots of the rest, to be paradise.
Yes, the vast majority of this country is very safe. Stay away from the central cities, and the Mexican border, and there’ll be no problems. The very safest areas happen to be the same areas where legal gun ownership is most common. Imagine that.
I know, I know. I just called the U.S. “paradise,” as if there’s nothing wrong anywhere. That’s not even remotely the case, but I come by my view honestly and through experience. Europe and Asia are great places to travel, but I do like coming home.
And in the UK there are areas that unarmed police simply won’t enter.
I think there is a common problem across many western countries in that the laws created by their elected governments require some basic level of enforcement.
However, certain contrarian, and i think incompetent, local leaders have realised they have the autonomous influence to decide which laws to enforce. This is done under the guise of community priorities or other such nonsense.
For a politician this a perfect scenario, they create the crisis that they can spend 4 years or more grabbing headlines about. While quietly behind the scenes their snouts are firmly in the trough of public spending and their true loyalties to corporate entities, and not the people they have sworn to serve, remains quietly hidden.
I think the governments should be forced into a moratorium on new laws until the ones we already have are being enforced.
The Left is out to Destroy the West, it has been their goal since Marx became a thing with the Wiemar Intellectuals. ‘Frankfurt School’ and all that.
Exactly. Chicago (or Illinois) has pretty much the strictest gun laws in the US. But those laws are not enforced because the politicians don’t want to upset certain communities. The inevitable result is hundreds of corpses every year.
IL’s gun laws aren’t as strict as you think. Too strict IMO, but most of New England, some of the mid-Atlantic, California, and Hawaii are far more restrictive.
The truth is that once suicides are stripped out along with inner city gang warfare, this is far less of an issue than people like to pretend it is. Millions legally own guns. If the problem was metal objects springing to life and harming people, you’d know it.
whatever it is that’s causing Americans to kill each other at a nearly 20% greater rate than they were at this time in 2020 will continue to cost lives. What? There is no whatever. There has been the rioting that followed the Floyd incident which led to dozens of murders, and there have been dozens more in the wake of the “defund” movement. The vast majority of the victims are black, as is the vast majority of assailants. This has mostly served to expose BLM as a farce that was built on a lie.
Black people account for 25% of the cases in which cops kill civilians. UNARMED blacks, of unarmed people of any color, is a far smaller raw number. And in case someone is thinking of “well, but blacks are only 13% of the population,” keep in mind they also commit half the homicides, usually against other black folks.
As of 2018 (the latest year for which I have the complete data from the Centers for Disease Control, which records deaths from all causes), for every non-Hispanic white male murdered with a gun, 15 non-Hispanic black men were murdered with a gun. According to the FBI, which compiles the data from around the country, 89% of all murders are committed within racial groups. The conclusion should be obvious.
Canada’s large metropolitan areas are now seeing a rise in gun crime similar to US cities. It’s almost always related to ethnic gang violence. Illegal unregistered guns are easily smuggled in from the US when two countries share the world’s longest undefended border.
Of course there’s much gnashing of teeth and faux outrage from the usual suspects but the only solution they can think of is a ban on legal ownership of hand-guns which already happens to be severely restricted.
If politicians and community leaders haven’t got the intestinal fortitude to call out the criminal element then I’d rather they just say nothing instead of virtue posing nonsense laws that only affect people that were law-abiding in the first place.
As long as being branded with the Scarlet R is considered to be the one unredeemable sin a politician can commit, worse than any other financial or policy fail, there’ll never be progress on this issue.
I’m surprised by your statement that background checks are a good idea; Federal law already requires a dealer to perform a background check when transferring a firearm.
When laws are proposed which target criminals, I’ll listen. Until then, it’s all politics.
Most guns used in mass shootings are purchased legally originally. Some are re-sold illegally. But the notion that we can stop mass shootings by controlling gun access is simply idiotic.
The issue is anger control, not gun control.
The uproar over ‘ghost guns’ is a red herring. I defy anyone to buy a gun kit on line and assemble a fully functional weapon with no serial number. Such kits always are missing one irreplaceable piece – the lower receiver. This crucial part does have a serial number, is reported to the ATF, and can only be obtained through a Federal Firearms Licensee after a background check. I also take issue with suicides being lumped in with criminal gun violence. If someone is determined to kill themselves, they will do so with or without a gun. Suicide is not a crime; only attempted suicide is. Even law enforcement recognizes that there is no point in having a crime where the perpetrator is dead once it happens.
Emotional soundbites are, I’m afraid, a particular talent of the left. As a European, I too was shocked when I found out that two thirds of all gun deaths in the US were suicides. The left never tell you that bit. Europe is a dead, echoing hell. There is literally no life here because all the great questions have been decided and history has concluded, at least if you listen to the MSM. The supposed parties of the right have completely internalized the values of the left and never argue about ideas or political philosophy. Left-right arguments in Europe consists of bickering about a penny or two off or on taxes here and there. It looked like the Republicans in the US were going down that road too, at least until Trump exploded onto the scene. It’s still too early to tell for sure what long term effect he’s had, but it’s encouraging to see younger Republicans getting right into the Democrats faces and fighting them for every inch of ground. Keep that up. We’re literally back where we were in the 1930s now, with America the beacon, the only hope left.
Also, as long as you are not a felon and do not intend to sell them, it has been perfectly legal to make your own unregistered firearms. Most 3D printed firearms are rather useless given that you need a metal barrel to make it reliable. 3D printed furniture are popular. Of course CNC machining has been a thing for over 50 years and CAD/CAM is common place these days. MIM is also a thing but I personally hate MIM parts. Things might start get a bit interesting with improvements to metallic 3D printing. Currently it is rather cost prohibitive and the accuracy is only within a couple thousandths of a inch, not bad for most parts and receivers, but unacceptable for barrels. However, with improved precision, lowering costs, more widespread industrial use, and the promise of electrochemical rifling, it may soon become easy for amateurs to easily manufacture their own reliable firearms. I seriously doubt this will change much in the United States, but things might get rather interesting in other countries.
As a side note, the usual know nothing idiots were shocked about home manufactured firearms because as a culture war issue, you are not required to know a damn thing about what you are saying. One particularly useless member of the Washington Post called it “gunsplaining.” “How dare you use actual knowledge and facts to show I have no idea what I am talking about!?”
“whatever it is that’s causing Americans to kill each other at a nearly 20% greater rate than they were at this time in 2020 will continue to cost lives.”
It’s the media. They distort stories to create racialist rage and hate. They cropped out all the non-white police around the white officer with his knee on George Floyd’s neck, because they wanted a narrative of white police killing blacks. They don’t care about police killings as a non-racial issue, and they don’t care about all the people who die as a result of their actions.