Good post!   A member recently mentioned how safe DC was since they had CC.   That is until I posted this:   http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 … /?page=all    So what happened?   Weren't we told guns make us safer?   So what about all those home invasions people claim to need guns for?   Home invasions are rare.   Thieves want you out of your home or apt.   Street crime?   Most people drive.   Hey, Chicago is really dangerous I hear and until a recent ruling didn't allow CC.   Chicago didn't make the ten or twenty five most dangerous cities in America and we didn't allow guns.   The average victim of gun violence in Chicago is a Black male.   That's also true nation wide.   

So have guns made us safer?   After all crime and the murder rate has fallen to historic lows.   Yes and no.   Several things have happened.   Our population is ageing.   Many violent criminals tend to be young.   Books like Freakonomics point to other factors:   http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/ … u-believe/

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/08/ … e-to-fall/    So where are all those violent thugs , rapists and vicious killers people need their guns for?   In jail.   We actually do a great job of locking people up.   So why are people so afraid when the facts don't bear out they should be.   Fear isn't rational.   Its models on this site being afraid and needing escorts when studies show that women have more problems with casual dates, boyfriends and husbands.    Fear is spending billions on TSA agents when there have been we have had few to no terrorists attacks and no planes being blown up with thousands of flights every year since 911.

People are simply afraid.   Guns comfort them.   What they forget is if someone wants to hurt or take your money they will.   If they think you have a gun they will shoot you before you have a chance to use it.   This isn't Dodge City where the Sheriff outdraws the bad guys.

Wasn't part of the article.

I'll see if I can find it later!

California has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. Due to budget cutbacks, the police weren't able to do a good job of controlling crime and/or protecting people. There was even a fatal shooting in broad daylight, one block from a police station. It kinda makes a person want to have a gun to protect themselves with, doesn't it?

Socioeconomic factors pay a far larger role than the availability of guns. Cutbacks in the police force and social services on the one hand and rising unemployment (and underemployment) create a viscious circle. People who are still "economically viable" move out, gangbangers move in and the social and economical climate in a whole city can topple quickly.

America is such a violent country because it lacks a basic welfare net like most other developed countries. When people lose their jobs they quickly lose everything and without public assistance are forced to a life of crime to make ends due.

It's not rocket science and taking away some guns here and there won't fix the underlying problem.

The why doesn't West Virginia have this big crime problem?

gangbanger don't "move in".... your favorite progressive governments kick the fathers out of the house breeding little criminals that the mothers can't control

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&clie … ,s:0,i:118

I dunno Udor, AZ has IIRC 10 cities with 100K+ and not one of them made the list. AZ is one of the few states where you do not need any training or a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Hell, you can buys guns at your local liquor stores here. I think your theory needs some work.

Oh... that's not my theory, it's an argument promoted here on SP and on facebook, that the areas with the most guns are supposedly the safest, because criminals won't enter areas with a high gun ratio in civilians hands... has nothing to do with me... I am just questioning the validity of such statements when I am seeing statistics like that...

... and those statistics I posted are FBI numbers and not from some lobbyists for the gun industry...

If I Remember Correctly   

Nonsense.

You think it's nonsense because you are of the belief that people are running around in Escalades, drinking fine Cognac with their welfare.

I'd say what she said is true.  Unemployment and Welfare (if you qualify) are hardly enough to get anyone by. 

When I lost my job about 5 years ago, I was making a decent salary.  The amount they paid me in Unemployment JUST  covered my rent, and I don't live in an expensive place.  Fortunately:

1.  I had money saved
2.  I know how to eat ramen
3.  I was only out of work for about 6 weeks.

Would I have turned to crime?  I hope not.   I like not living in jail.  I also have more options than others.

Those are all urban cities.

I know that, in the case of Stockon and Oakland, you can't really carry your gun. 

(They do have CC, but they are given sparingly).  Oakland has stayed on the list.  Stockton goes on and off it.  Sometimes Richmond makes an appearance. 

All of them are hoods with lots of poverty.  So there are also lots of drugs, gangs and... crime.

I used to live in St Louis.  I remember my neighborhood "turning."  I go back every now and then when I have to visit family in the MidWest.  It's miserable. 

I've been to most of those cities.

This got me thinking. During the 1970's, gun shootings weren't near as bad as the 1980's and current. What had happened is, when crack hit the scene in those example cities and like, this alone caused a much larger drug war in the poor communities because you no longer had the elite that ran the drug game where you were groomed and certain people were selected and had to honor the man on top.

After crack hit the scene, every seller became their own boss and most of those in charge were from gangs. Gangs during the 70's didn't run the drug show. When the gangs started running the show, things got out of hand because there was no order. Odd thing to say. Sounds/reads like a oxy moron. But it rings true. With more independent dealers, turf wars and more money came. The gang bangers could afford to get caliber guns that either the rich could afford or the king pins could only afford. Military style that weren't heard of on the streets during the 70's. This along with crack changed the dynamics. Murder rates went up several fold.

The sad thing about this is, what had happened on the east coast with the children happens everyday in the hood. They had two toddlers here that were killed during a drive by in Oakland on different days. It's kind of fucked up that it takes a Columbine or a small town like Sandy to make what was already a national crises a national crisis.

MS-13.

If it's nonsense, it would be nice for you to show some stats to back up your reply.

Funny. Your type will always yell that but don't want them in your back yard or pay for them. Are you going to pay for them? Sure, we can build more prisons and send the inmates here that are over crowding the places here to your State. As long as you plan on paying for it.

The person I responded to did not post stats. Just liberal European nonsense.

A larger safety net in the US would do very little to the crime rate.

Getting Americans to stop having babies out of wedlock by multiple fathers would be the best answer.

Look to the OP for 10 great places to build them.

Strong public education, state-sponsored health promotion including unencumbered sex education, and good income security programs. That's how the rest of the west does it.

thats interesting because theres been many claims here of late that laws dont prevent crimes, they are only a mechanism to punish. this would seem to disprove that claim

Well, some Americans, that is. OTOH, the Master Race should continue breeding indiscriminately, for the good of the Fatherland, in or out of padlocks wedlock.

No abortions for anyone, either. Ist verboten!

It's not a crisis as long as it's only black kids and brown kids that are dying.

When white suburbia feels the pain, the people politicians actually have to listen to, it's an entirely different pressure and public spotlight.

Not surprised you are pro illegitimacy!

Squirt and run!

About 50 % of Americans have no capital assets and savings whatsoever. They have to spend every dollar they make (often working several jobs) just to get by. When they're fired they have no cushion to fall on until they get a new job and without sufficient public assistance, things can go sideways quickly. Even more so when there are spouses and kids involved.

I'd wager that most men are capable of committing many crimes when it comes to providing for their families by any means necessary.

Most other developed nations have a defined substinence level, the lowest quality of living still deemed acceptable that the public has to provide for every citizen, including those that can't take care of it by themselves anymore because they are out of a job or physically or mentally unable to do so.

I remember seeing a documentary about the Los Angeles "water man", a guy who spends his free time providing the homeless population of L.A. with bottled water.

The conditions these people had to live in were eerily similar to how they are treated in Russia, the only difference being that America is an immeasurably wealthy first world nation.

That citizens have to live like sewer rats, surrounded by all that obscene wealth, should be cause for nationwide shame.

And what do the "compassionate" conservatives want to do to fix the problem? Take away the food stamps.

Because you know it would all be so much easier if those filthy drug- and disease infested rats just all starved to death. Problem solved. That's a very Stalinist view of fellow human beings, but one all too common in the current conservative mainstream (which far transcends the Republican party and the United States).

The elites do not favor a bourgeoisie that is too educated - that is, educated enough to realize who is janking their chain. Imagine a future meritocracy that provided every child with the best education possible, it would crush any set upper class of present date because 95 % of the current upper class recruits out of its own ranks. Elites breed elites. And they want to keep it that way.

And yet, someone still has to clean the toilets and wipe the floors

"Legitimacy" is a tool of compliance imposed upon all by the state, our Fatherland.

Interesting see our conservative friends bowing, scraping and genuflecting passively before their master, the State, as such reverence enters the permanent SB record for all to see.

In a big way...I wholeheartedly agree with you...socioeconomic factors do play a large part, but it also goes deep into the psyche of America, and why some feel we should take some guns away rather than give more out...

Giving more guns only leads to more violence, and us solving problems through violence.  In America we are practically worshiping something designed to maim, and kill.  I had a young boy on FB get angry at me over my anti gun stance and started calling me tons of names..I looked on his page, and saw a picture of a opposum he said he shot...his words were this is where the bullet came out, and it blew his leg off too...COOL.   And you could see the animals leg actually blown off.  A 15 year old...

Our society, our culture...our view of violence, and guns is the underlying problem.  At least if we try a method other than giving out more guns...we can show our youth that you can solve your problems with something other than violence.

Ding... Ding... Ding we have a winner!    As long as it was mostly Black and Brown children being shot nothing would have ever been done nor would we talk about it.   As long as people feel Welfare is a minority problem people will attack it.   As long as drug abuse is seen as a minority issue then users and sellers will continue to go to prison for years.   Sandy Hook woke the nation up.   There are simply too many guns.   They are too easy to get and yes its criminals who use them but its also software engineers who shoot into a van because he argued with teens.   Its a pre-teen who shoots a young girl on a school bus.   Why we don't know.   Its a father who sees what he assumes is a prowler outside of his home but kills his son.   This after he had called the police and could have waited for them.

People are fond of saying that most gun owners are responsible and reasonable people.   Judging by some of those who have replied to the gun problem on this site.   I wouldn't trust them with a water gun.

Violence is deeply embedded into the American pop culture. You can get away with a lot of violence in a PG 13 movie, but show just one female nipple for a split second and millions will call the FCC outraged over a TV station exposing their kids to such obscenity that will forever ruin their young minds.

The question is: Why is violence so glorified in America? Maybe it's part of its creation myth - the country was founded with the shot heard around the world after all, and violently expanded by annihilating the native inhabitants thanks to superior (gun) firepower.

Maybe it's because Americans have been pretty safe and sheltered from gross violence in their real lives. It's an abstract concept for most. Even most of the violence inside America  happens in secluded inner-city ghettos.

As a collective consciousness that's very different from a country like mine where a quarter of the population was killed in the Great War and not one family was left unscathed of genocide, starvation, rapes, mass executions, gulags and concentration camps.

Maybe these collective experiences are the reason why many people in the old world seem to have lost the stomach for idolizing these tools designed to inflict death. At least for now.

Many won't shed a tear if brown and black folk is shooting each other and isn't one gangbanger less a good thing? Of course they won't say that out loud, that'd be racist with all the silly leftist PC police today. But it's a deeply embedded thinking among many that those who die from the sword simply made bad choices and are solely responsible for their own demise.

Of course a black baby born in South Central is no more violent than a white baby born in Beverly Hills, but there's a greater chance that this black baby will go to prison than go to college one day while anything but a great university education will be abnormal for the white kid from Beverly Hills.

People prefer not to think about these things, the underlying ugliness of a deeply divided society, both racially and socio-economically, that's just too much to handle for most. They might actually have to do something about it when they start thinking about these issues, so it's best not to think about them at all and use the easy cop-out: Individual responsibility. Just pretend it's all their own damn fault.