I can get behind some mild gun controls that do not go against the 2nd Ad.
My concerns are related to the other amendments and sections to be honest.
But it is a bit insane that people don’t realize that being a large population being divested from the legal system can lead to violence.
I am not arguing for 100% legal drugs but Chicago’s gang violence wouldn’t happen or would be rare if those parties had access to the legal system for disputes.
So why isn’t Indiana’s gun homicide rate equivalent to Chicago’s?
The per capita homicide rate in Indianapolis is about the same as Chicago.
How does corruption in Chicago’s religious institutions lead to violence?
There are long-standing socio-economic and racial patterns in Chicago that have long contributed to the crime rate overall, let alone the murder rate.
A disproportionate number of people shot every day in Chicago, and a disproportionate number killed, are black. The violence is not spread evenly over the city, it’s heavily concentrated in neighborhoods that are either black or brown and poor. Places like Hyde Park, Lincoln Park, and the East Side are still pretty safe where you are unlikely to be shot either accidentally or deliberately. Meanwhile, in the past week two guys doing repairs on a house were shot and one killed when they decided to stop for lunch and took a seat on the lawn - collateral damage in a suspected gang shooting.
Another factor that everyone is forgetting is that this past weekend was HOT. Hot and humid, and in poor neighborhoods a lot of people either don’t have air conditioning or have inadequate air conditioning. That contributes to short tempers, violence, and crime. It wasn’t a primary cause, but it was a factor.
Using this chart from Wikipedia with stats from 2015 and presuming the vast majority of murders are with guns…
Chicago is 23 per 100,000
Detroit is 43 per 100,000
Of course, Chicago has a lot more people than Detroit so in absolute numbers more people die of gun violence in Chicago than in Detroit.
At that, Detroit is only third on that list (top is St. Louis, Missouri and second is Baltimore, Maryland) and between Detroit and Chicago you have, in order, New Orleans, Newark, Milwaukee, and Washington DC.
So, as bad as Chicago may be, it’s not the most hazardous city to live in. But since it has a larger population over all the raw numbers for Chicago are higher. There may also be other differences in Chicago, such that some neighborhoods bear a disproportionate amount of murder.
It’s not just the number or proportion of shootings, it’s also where they take place and what the consequences are. The murder clearance rate for the Chicago police department is half that of the national average so people are, literally, getting away with murder. There is long-standing endemic corruption. Wealthy/white areas really do get better policing than poor/brown/black areas.
As someone who had a front seat to watch the decline of Detroit - yes, Chicago is sliding down the same razor blade into the same pit.
OK, then answer me this - why does Indiana with its lax gun laws and have much lower rates of murder per capita? The only two Indiana cities that make the list I linked to above are Indianapolis and Fort Wayne - Gary, a severely depressed economic black hole sitting right next to Chicago didn’t even make the list despite the easy availability of guns.
Shootings are a symptom that something is seriously wrong in Chicago, not a primary cause. The eastern border of Chicago is the Indiana/Illinois state line. Why do the shootings drop the minute you cross State Line Road?
Sure… let’s blame the poor, brown people. That’s always worked so well in Chicago…
First - gangs in Chicago were never just in the projects. Do you think Al Capone lived in a project? When gang leaders got enough cash they moved themselves and their families to a better place whether they were white, brown, or black.
Second - a LOT of people displaced by tearing down the projects didn’t just go to other places in the city, they went to the suburbs. The suburbs are not drowning in blood, so why Chicago proper? (This echoes the Detroit Problem - Detroit lost 5/6 of its population. So where did they go? The suburbs. But while there was some crime rise from that the Detroit suburbs never got anywhere near as bad as the city proper. So it’s not just a Chicago thing. It’s a large-city-going-down-the-shitter thing.)
Third - who do you think is buying all those drugs that are funding this violence? Hint: it ain’t the poor locals, they don’t have enough money to account for all this. Folks from the wealthy neighborhoods buy their drugs (and their guns) from the cesspit neighborhoods but somehow you almost never hear about wealthy folks getting busted. The money to fund all this is coming from neighborhoods with money that get decent policing then smugly tell themselves they’re better than where they do their shopping.
Fourth - as I mentioned, this weekend was HOT. Hot and humid. That means more crime, it always has. That was a factor in this weekend’s carnage.
^ This.
It’s not that Chicago overall is a warzone, but certain parts of the city are. If you stay out of those neighborhoods you’re relatively safe… but it’s hell for those who live in those neighborhoods.
We recently had a thread there where a poster who lives in Chicago was frothing at the mouth over being inconvenienced one rush hour by people from those neighborhoods protesting the bloodbath - one of his responses was basically oh, those people are inconveniencing me? Let’s take away the police from their neighborhoods and all the other city services, that’ll show 'em! Regrettably, this is not an isolated phenomena. In fact, it’s been the response for decades every time those uppity folks on the south and west side complained about crime and/or police abuse. The result is people not trusting the police and a soaring crime rate. And other people are still calling for removing the police from these neighborhoods.
What did they think the result of all this would be?
So why isn’t Lake and Porter county Indiana, right next door to Chicago and linked economically and socially to Chicago, not full of “illegal, untraceable guns that are being used on a daily basis”? If anything, the economy is worse in Lake County, Indiana than in Chicago proper. There are drugs and gangs in Lake County, IN. Why isn’t the crime/murder rate comparable? Same for the Chicago suburbs, which while not having as lax gun laws as Indiana still have readily available guns and also have the lack of background checks for private sales and gun shows?
If a human being posts here with dire problems and blames everyone else for their problem what do we tell them? So… what should we tell Chicago, which blames their gun problem on everyone around them?
It’s not JUST the guns - other places have just as many guns, but they don’t have as many guns or murders, not even places right next door with the same economic, political, and racial problems.
Yes, there is something rotten in the heart of Chicago itself, and it’s not just that there are poor people of color there - as I said, plenty of other places have the same folks without the same level of problems. The poor non-white are a convenient scapegoat, just like “lax Indiana gun laws” and “the economy”. The same excuses are made, the same parties are blamed, and nothing changes. Maybe it’s time to look at other parts of the city, and how decisions are made there.
If the city of Chicago is so jacked up that policing what was essentially a parade is going to lead the rest of the city so naked that two days later there’s a blood bath then the city has serious endemic problems that go beyond just “micro-gangs” as you put it.
I lived in Chicago itself for 15 years and the area for 20 more. Oddly enough, most of that time the city could manage multiple festivals and parades on a weekend involving hundreds of thousands of people without descending into a warzone level of death and maiming. Why can’t it manage to do that anymore?
Your response, dalej42, was to strip even more police and resources from the south and west sides. How do you think that will help? It’s as if you called 911 and the response was “don’t bother us - not only are we not coming out to help you, we’re turning off the street lights and your water service. Keep complaining that your children are dying and we’ll really make your life unpleasant.” As if it wasn’t already. :rolleyes:
The protest earlier in the week had NOTHING to do with the bloodbath over the weekend. The police for the LSD protest did not stand around the road and Wrigley field for two days after the protest ended. That’s ridiculous. That’s you looking for a scapegoat and blaming the usual suspects. How is that working out for your city?
Also decades of racial bias in the city, and decades of corruption in running that city.
I know you’re being flip with this, but it contains a significant truth. Organized gang behavior is essentially top-down authoritarian and fascistic. Disorganized gang behavior is more anarchic and warlord-like. The competition creates a more violent, impulsive response-set that leads to more shootings.
Honestly, what’s being reported reminds me of Washington DC in the 90s. For those not paying attention, DC was downright dangerous. We had people being executed - not drive-bys and such but actually made to kneel and executed - in the Starbucks. While there were good and bad neighborhoods there was no place really safe from violence. I challenge anyone who wants to point to Rahm Emmanuel for corruption to top having your long-time mayor arrested after being videotaped smoking crack with a ‘model’ in terms of how entirely fucked-up a city can become.
It basically is in Indianapolis and South Bend and it’s far higher in Gary.
And it was damn funny!
No, actually, Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, not South Bend. Gary didn’t make the list.
Now, Gary does have a high crime rate but, like Detroit, the city flushed its population. There are a lot fewer people in Gary, therefore, the raw numbers of people shot are far lower. Even so, it’s like the situation in Chicago - Gary is a “hot spot” (or rather, certain neighborhoods in Gary are, some neighborhoods like Miller Beach and Black Oak are actually relatively safe, and even Glen Park, which I live a couple blocks from, is not a shooting gallery). The rest of the county is awash with guns, but not awash with gun violence. Why is that? Why the “hot spots”?
The cathedral turf wars have produced a lot of blood over the years. Mostly due to transubstantiation, but the statistics are still shocking…
Didn’t make what list? Gary has like 3x the murder rate of Chicago.
The country isn’t awash with gun violence? I guess that’s subjective, but I can’t say I really agree.
The focus on Chicago, especially 3 or 4 years ago, instead of St. Louis or New Orleans or Milwaukee was entirely a political tactic because of Obama’s association. If you want to ask why (group of a dozen or more cities) haven’t curbed gun violence to the rate that New York City has, that’s a reasonable question, but I don’t think people usually ask this question caring about answers. They do it for political points.
There is some history of gangs exploiting ties to Chicago churches for purposes such as money laundering.
As with the courting of gang support by some city council candidates (noted upthread), the level of entanglement by the gangs with legitimate institutions may be a unique factor in Chicago.
There is also an escalation point - those unaffiliated teenagers who otherwise might not have obtained guns are threatened by those that do have them, and thus seek them out for their own protection. Which means more people with guns on the street, and more people feeling threatened, etc etc.
I know it seems weird to consider easy access to guns to be a contributing factor to gun violence, but I’m sure you’ll come to terms with it.
The word you’re looking for is “reason”.
Actually, the US is sending lots and lots of illegal guns to Mexico. The US is the main source of non-military weaponry used by Mexican drug gangs (corrupt members of the Mexican military being the source for the bigger hardware). So your point about the next area over “sending in guns” isn’t the empty excuse you keep insisting it is.
The ready availability of guns isn’t the instigator of gun violence in Chicago - there is a long list of historical and current social factors driving it - but it is a major facilitator of it (or if you prefer, it is not a *sufficient *condition but it is a *necessary *one). It is also the reason the argument that “Chicago’s gun laws don’t work, therefore gun control in general doesn’t work” fails. Arguments like this one:
One could more easily make the case that we need stronger and more widespread gun control laws to address the problem than use Chicago as an example of why we should get rid of them.
Nope, 17.1 vs 23.8.
While everyone accepts it on faith that Chicago has some unchanging draconian gun laws, the homicide rate in Chicago has increased since the revocation of the Chicago handgun ban (2010), gun registration law (2013) and ban on retail gun shops (2014). This isn’t to say that out-of-state imported weapons aren’t still a huge issue but it’s much easier to get your hands on a local gun now than it was a decade ago.
Gary has not had 300 murders this year so far. Granted, that’s partly due to having fewer people. Gary is also not having quite as many innocent bystanders gunned down.
I said COUNTY, not “country”, and it was not a misspelling. Lake County, Indiana. Which is basically a Chicago suburb.
The point is not whether illegal guns are a sufficient condition for a high murder rate. The specific context is comparing Chicago to other US cities with mainly, among larger ones, and particularly NY, a much lower murder rate. The issue is whether having ‘lax’ gun control laws in a state a few miles away is all the much different from having them in a state an hour away (PA from NY) or a few hours (down the I-95 corridor). There’s no way to prove exactly what difference that distance makes but I would say common sense say not a huge amount, given the perceived need for guns in the communities with huge amounts of gun violence. The theory that having to drive or pay somebody the premium of driving a few more hours makes a huge difference is implausible IMO.
Therefore Indiana gun laws are a weak theory for why the murder rate in Chicago is higher than many other US cities and has a less favorable trend.
I didn’t jump to the conclusion that ‘gun control never works’. But the differences in murder rates among various cities is poorly explained by them. That’s pretty inescapable IMO if you aren’t already sure of the answer (gun control is really useful or really bad) and willing to torture statistics and make mountains of molehills among differences. Saying it makes a big difference that Indiana is so close to Chicago is an example of that. It’s not like travel is restricted or there are check points leading into other US cities. It’s not as if many if hardly any of the guns are brought into cities spur of the moment rather than planned, or that the violence problem is among people whose lives are otherwise tightly woven into orderly society. It’s people whose lives are outside the laws to begin with. Note that’s not saying ‘if guns were outlawed only outlaws would have guns’. Laws against carrying, in particular, handguns can be useful as part of ‘broken windows policing’ (ie. catching people doing nothing but walking around with illegal handguns who’d probably commit crimes with them eventually)…but that’s not heavily frowned upon now in some quarters. So it’s not NRA sloganeering to say the perpetrators of gun violence are mainly people already outside the law in how they live their lives in general, it’s just true. And that subculture will get guns whether somebody has to drive to Indiana or a few hours further. Nor is it reasonable for Chicago authorities to take the position they can’t lower their murder rate 80+% like NY did until there’s some unrealistic level of US national gun control. Maybe nobody there can lower it as much as NY did. But Indiana gun laws are not much of the reason.
Look at Indianapolis’s murder rate.
You don’t think the criminal monopoly on civilian guns doesn’t help the popularity of gangs?
If the US military bombed all the civilian gun factories and civilian ammunition factories in its own country, on Sundays, and committed to also bombing any new ones that spring up in the future, there would be relatively minimal loss of life and a huge benefit to the rest of society. Even society in other countries. So hunting becomes a bit more primitive, who cares.
Handguns are exclusively murder weapons - they have no other purpose. I know they have another IMAGINARY purpose, but that doesn’t matter. They certainly aren’t protection against the big bad gummint.