Gun Legislation, Crime, and Events

[gehringer_2]

29 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

I would add that it's the one political issue where requisite knowledge is often treated as a requirement to opine, at least by some.

 

it's just another deflection strategy. Understanding the linguistic tics of firearms has close to nothing to do with understanding their social, legal and public health effects. I doubt many traffic safety experts could tell you much about the thermodynamics of an internal combustion engine. For that matter do the self appointed firearms experts  know  anything about the chemistry of the powder or the phase diagrams of the metallurgy of  said weapons, all critical to what they are - is that enough to disqualify them to speak?

Edited December 6, 2021 by gehringer_2

[casimir]

18 hours ago, Archie said:

Its just proof that you and many of your fellow liberals don't know what you are talking about when discussing firearms.

This from someone that referred to a gun as "just a piece of metal".

[Motown Bombers]

Had a conference call with the CEO today. A conference call is basically a Webex meeting where the CEO talks and everyone is muted and we type questions in the chat. There was discussion on Oxford since the company is located close to Oxford and many employees live there. CEO says I don't know what needs to be done with this gun violence in the US. I then suggested the company could quit donating to politicians who refuse to address guns and asked why the company continues to support the politicians who have flooded our streets with guns and he ignored my question. 

[Archie]

What is missing here is the knowledge of the real problem. No matter what Alec Baldwin says a firearm won't shoot by itself.  A person has to pull the trigger to make it fire.  Do you really think that if someone want to kill they won't find a way to do it.  McVeigh killed a lot of people including children without a shot being fired. Liberal policies are making the US more dangerous everyday and a lot of refuse to be victims because of them.  Why do you think more people buy and carry guns? You don't see most of the guns people carry because they are concealed.  Blaming guns is the easy way out and doesn't fix the real problem.

And yes, I stand behind my statement that most people here know nothing about firearms. Besides calling parts by a wrong name there have been countless posts citing "automatic" weapon or the best was an automatic pistol.  This shows complete lack of knowledge.  I don't care that they don't know what they're talking about but it really makes them look foolish in their argument.

[Archie]

8 minutes ago, casimir said:

This from someone that referred to a gun as "just a piece of metal".

You're right a lot have a lot of plastic in them too.

[Archie]

4 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Had a conference call with the CEO today. A conference call is basically a Webex meeting where the CEO talks and everyone is muted and we type questions in the chat. There was discussion on Oxford since the company is located close to Oxford and many employees live there. CEO says I don't know what needs to be done with this gun violence in the US. I then suggested the company could quit donating to politicians who refuse to address guns and asked why the company continues to support the politicians who have flooded our streets with guns and he ignored my question. 

Why don't you ask him to stop donating to politicians that flood our streets with criminals?

[Tiger337]

10 minutes ago, Archie said:

And yes, I stand behind my statement that most people here know nothing about firearms. Besides calling parts by a wrong name there have been countless posts citing "automatic" weapon or the best was an automatic pistol.  This shows complete lack of knowledge.  I don't care that they don't know what they're talking about but it really makes them look foolish in their argument.

Nobody cares if they look foolish, because it's irrelevant to the arguments being made.  You are just trying to deflect.  

[casimir]

12 minutes ago, Archie said:

Why don't you ask him to stop donating to politicians that flood our streets with criminals?

Sure.  So someone points a paper clip at you with one hand and a loaded handgun with their other hand.  Neither object is more harmful to you than the other.

[1776]

We’re all aware of the human carnage of black youths in Chicago. Last week the Cook County Medical Office recorded its 1,000th murder of 2021. There is a month left in the year. Of these victims, an estimated 80% were black. This is so wrong on so many levels. 
 

I have a question that is simple and straightforward. How do we stop this ongoing madness? It is beyond epidemic. I have read, true or not, that Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws out there. I confess, I don’t know their laws related to this topic.

So what is the answer?

[Archie]

3 minutes ago, 1776 said:

We’re all aware of the human carnage of black youths in Chicago. Last week the Cook County Medical Office recorded its 1,000th murder of 2021. There is a month left in the year. Of these victims, an estimated 80% were black. This is so wrong on so many levels. 
 

I have a question that is simple and straightforward. How do we stop this ongoing madness? It is beyond epidemic. I have read, true or not, that Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws out there. I confess, I don’t know their laws related to this topic.

So what is the answer?

Part of it is people just don't value life.  Killing is regular occurance in Chicago as you pointed out.  I'm not familiar with the exact laws in Chicago but I know they have some of the toughest around.  The criminals don't follow laws anyway.  

[Archie]

18 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Nobody cares if they look foolish, because it's irrelevant to the arguments being made.  You are just trying to deflect.  

I'm not deflecting anything.  Read what I posted on guns not firing by themselves.

[gehringer_2]

26 minutes ago, 1776 said:

So what is the answer?

 

16 minutes ago, Archie said:

Part of it is people just don't value life.

what makes people not value life? Feeling like you don't have much to live for.

*Most* murder in America has always been an underclass problem - you can overlay murder rates on income data census tract by census track and get nearly a one to one correlation. So the question is both simpler and more complex - which is how do you attack the poverty in US inner cities which is where most US poverty and most US murder are? A big part of the reason we have poor, decayed inner cities is because they are mostly black, and when whites moved away they took their political power and economic development resources with them. That's more or less the definition of institutional racism. Political resources allotment decisions made by majoritarian systems have a natural bias toward beggaring the minority. That's baked into the system. That's a hard political problem to solve. Integration is the 'easiest' answer in a system like ours where representation is geographically based, but America doesn't seem to be capable of it.

But to be clear, murder in Chicago and mayhem like Sandy Hook or Oxford are quite different problems and we defeat ourselves when we don't keep the distinction clear.  It's true they intersect at the availability of guns, and reduction in that availability would help both, but that is the only factor they share in common.

Edited December 6, 2021 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

19 minutes ago, 1776 said:

We’re all aware of the human carnage of black youths in Chicago. Last week the Cook County Medical Office recorded its 1,000th murder of 2021. There is a month left in the year. Of these victims, an estimated 80% were black. This is so wrong on so many levels. 
 

I have a question that is simple and straightforward. How do we stop this ongoing madness? It is beyond epidemic. I have read, true or not, that Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws out there. I confess, I don’t know their laws related to this topic.

So what is the answer?

Most of the Chicago guns come from outside of Illinois, especially Indiana which has very loose gun laws.  Unlike some of the random suburban killings we have been talking about though, I think problems in certain inner city areas are not just a matter of availability of guns.  They stem from desperation and hopelessness caused by wealth and income disparity.  There are bad schools, bad neighborhoods, lack of positive role models, lack of opportunity.

[Motown Bombers]

Despite the high homicide totals in Chicago, Illinois only ranks 34th in murder rate. Indiana averages about 4 more murders per 100k than Illinois. 

[1776]

“A big part of the reason we have poor, decayed inner cities is because they are mostly black, and when whites moved away they took their political power and economic development resources with them.”

I am not going to oppose your point at all but I’d like to pose a question that I have asked myself at times. To my knowledge there was nothing like the black on black crime that we see today prior to integration. Black Americans were amazingly resilient in light of the hate toward them and the concerted effort by racist whites to keep them in their places and do whatever possible to make their lives miserable. 
So going back your point I quoted above, aren’t inner city blacks today without “political power and economic development resources” today, as  as they were before. Yet, prior to full integration, blacks didn’t destroy themselves by killing each other and the like. Yes, I agree that economics is a contributor here but 60-70 years ago blacks were battling the institutional racism across this country and they were very economically depressed then, very! But, there was not the ongoing violence toward each other that we see today. I find it difficult to point solely to economic disadvantages alone.

And no, my conversation has nothing to do with other gun topics and events being discussed on this thread.

[1776]

24 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

They stem from desperation and hopelessness caused by wealth and income disparity. 

Could we not make the same comment about black Americans 75 years ago? Particularly in the south? Yet, black funeral directors weren’t being overwhelmed with the slaughter of the local youth due to gang violence and killings.

[buddha]

44 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Most of the Chicago guns come from outside of Illinois, especially Indiana which has very loose gun laws.  Unlike some of the random suburban killings we have been talking about though, I think problems in certain inner city areas are not just a matter of availability of guns.  They stem from desperation and hopelessness caused by wealth and income disparity.  There are bad schools, bad neighborhoods, lack of positive role models, lack of opportunity.

it stems from the drug trade and the violent gangs that control it.

[Archie]

Anybody that can take a life without a thought is someone that doesn't value life.

I think a lot of the problems today is because of the digital age and the World Wide Web.  

We've always had guns and violent crimes but it increased a lot in the last two or three decades.  When I was a kid we play cops and robbers, cowboys and indians and army with our cap guns. None that caused any mental problems. We also played outside from sun up to sun down and later.  Today kids don't interact face to face or hardly play outside.  They have their faces buried in their phones nonstop and always playing video games that are very realistic. Its probably not 100% of the problem but has contributed a lot to the decline of society and humanity in general. 

[Archie]

51 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Most of the Chicago guns come from outside of Illinois, especially Indiana which has very loose gun laws.  Unlike some of the random suburban killings we have been talking about though, I think problems in certain inner city areas are not just a matter of availability of guns.  They stem from desperation and hopelessness caused by wealth and income disparity.  There are bad schools, bad neighborhoods, lack of positive role models, lack of opportunity.

I read an article that said 40% of guns recovered in Chicago came from outside Chicago but from Illinois while 21% came from Indiana mainly because of its proximity to Chicago. The remaining 39% came from many other states all the way down to Florida and Mississippi.

[buddha]

3 minutes ago, Archie said:

Anybody that can take a life without a thought is someone that doesn't value life.

I think a lot of the problems today is because of the digital age and the World Wide Web.  

We've always had guns and violent crimes but it increased a lot in the last two or three decades.  When I was a kid we play cops and robbers, cowboys and indians and army with our cap guns. None that caused any mental problems. We also played outside from sun up to sun down and later.  Today kids don't interact face to face or hardly play outside.  They have their faces buried in their phones nonstop and always playing video games that are very realistic. Its probably not 100% of the problem but has contributed a lot to the decline of society and humanity in general. 

but it hasnt increased a lot nationally, but i think it has increased slightly.  it has increased in certain places (like chicago). it increased a lot in the late 80s and early 90s (pre-internet, btw) due to the explosion in use of crack cocaine and the violent gangs that ran that industry.  then it decreased substantially in the late 90s and into the 2000s.  now, it has increased again in the late 2020s in certain areas, especially after the pandemic and the riots from that summer.

why is it increasing?  you get explanations from everything from the pandemic to decreasing incarceration in cities to police disengagement to the internet.  i suspect that the increase in crime is different depending upon where you live.

the one constant in crime is the availability of guns.  i dont presuppose to know if local strict gun laws make a difference (i suspect a full ban on guns anywhere would make a difference).  i think local gun laws in places like chicago are undermined by the availability of guns in cities adjacent to chicago and that most guns used by gangs are made by straw purchasers or stolen.

[Jim Cowan]

16 minutes ago, buddha said:

it stems from the drug trade and the violent gangs that control it.

100%

[buddha]

last weekend in chicago, 9 people were murdered and 26 people wounded.  a "mob" of teenagers also ran amok downtown, causing significant property damage, looting stores, and beating people up while stealing their phones and other property.

i feel pretty safe, even though there have been 3 murders in my neighborhood in the last week and gunshots fired three blocks from my house last night.

i guess it's all what youre used to!

[1776]

16 minutes ago, Archie said:

I think a lot of the problems today is because of the digital age and the World Wide Web.  

Root cause? People aren’t killing each other just because Al Gore invented the internet. What has changed?

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, 1776 said:

“A big part of the reason we have poor, decayed inner cities is because they are mostly black, and when whites moved away they took their political power and economic development resources with them.”

I am not going to oppose your point at all but I’d like to pose a question that I have asked myself at times. To my knowledge there was nothing like the black on black crime that we see today prior to integration. Black Americans were amazingly resilient in light of the hate toward them and the concerted effort by racist whites to keep them in their places and do whatever possible to make their lives miserable. 
So going back your point I quoted above, aren’t inner city blacks today without “political power and economic development resources” today, as  as they were before. Yet, prior to full integration, blacks didn’t destroy themselves by killing each other and the like. Yes, I agree that economics is a contributor here but 60-70 years ago blacks were battling the institutional racism across this country and they were very economically depressed then, very! But, there was not the ongoing violence toward each otherAr that we see today. I find it difficult to point solely to economic disadvantages alone.

And no, my conversation has nothing to do with other gun topics and events being discussed on this thread.

Let's look at the premise of your question. What make you think there has ever been such a thing as integration in America? We have a veneer of social integration of upper class Blacks, but Blacks and whites still live overwhelmingly in separate places and more importantly, with separate legislative representation. We have an integrated social world, but we are still nearly completely segregated residentially, educationally, and politically.

Lets look at Detroit. A racist legislative system had been put in place decades before where all city council members were elected at large in order to prevent minorities from gaining council seats. Yet ironically that left every member vying for everyone's votes and there was a large stable black middle class in Detroit that had a measure of political influence. But Detroit was at heart a racist city (lots of southern transplants had come to work in the auto plants and brought it with them)  and when the school desegregation case threatened existing geographical segregation in the Detroit schools, ( while the city income tax helped trigger the exodus of small business) it triggered a wave of human and small business emigration that emptied more than half the city's population, destroyed it's tax base, and more importantly also destroyed the value of the financial equity that middle class black families had in their homes ( the average American's biggest investment) as neighborhoods collapsed all around the city. And once that population left, its state and federal political muscle left with it.

Is it so hard to fathom that the place and the population left behind ended up in a worse *economic* condition than prior to the civil rights era? Coleman Young achieved his ambition for Black leadership in the city, but it was command of a sinking ship. The saddest of Pyrrhic victories.

Its been very insidious that white America has managed to take things away from black America in every act in which it has apparently yielded something to it. 

And as I've tried to stress, I don't even think a lot of this is motivated by overt political racism - it's just the natural outcome of a geography based representation,  residentially segregated populations, and gerrymandering doesn't help! That's why it can be so persistent. It's tied to the core organization of American government.

Edited December 6, 2021 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

27 minutes ago, buddha said:

it stems from the drug trade and the violent gangs that control it.

What was the origin of the gangs and drug trade?