Gun Violence: For a College Paper (Chicago, Normal: crime, legally, versus)

[Huckleberry3911948]

People love to explain things in college very good at that
Just awful about doing anything about it but great at explaining it
Chicago has strongest gun laws in America
Chicago does not have a gun problem Chicago has a black violence problem
Signed a native
And former resident

[atlaw]

There is no such thing as gun violence. only people violence.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Nonesuch

I moved from Chicago, Illinois (extensive gun regulation, lots of crime, got shot at) to New Hampshire (zero gun regulation, minimal crime, only whitetail deer need fear being shot). So while the lack of gun laws in NH may not be the cause for the low violence, I'm still happy with the move. My new home town doesn't have a measurable murder rate (one homicide in the past decade, not a shooting).



There has been evidence of a direct link between cocaine and violence, unfortunately I cannot find any published studies newer than 2002.


I'd call that, direct, expansive, and outdated.

You were talking about cocaine in your first response but then the study you cite as authoritative is not specific to cocaine. Furthermore, measuring the drug levels in victims says very little about the cause of violence. Examining victims can be useful in seeing where to concentrate prevention efforts, but doesn't really tell us much about the *cause* of violence.

Drug use is extremely widespread in parts of Europe that have little to no violent crime - victims' use of drugs doesn't have a *causative* effect on violence. People who use drugs may be involved in things that expose them to greater violence, but it is far more likely that there is some other force that leads both to higher rates of drug use and greater exposure to violence. For all that study shows, people who are forced to live in circumstances that result in higher rates of violence turn to drugs simply to self-medicate away the stresses caused by the proximity to violence.

In your 2002 study, the highest rate of victim use was in the 'drug robbery' category, which isn't surprising and fits with what I was saying about drug *dealers* causing much of the violence. When you specified *cocaine* metabolites specifically, you were - perhaps unintentionally - using an argument that cocaine makes people crazy and so they're murdered partially out of self defense by the killers. That is a real argument that was commonly made during the initial spread of crack cocaine in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which was based on a flawed understanding of the relative impact of crack (freebase) cocaine as compared to powdered cocaine Hcl. That same flawed understanding is what left crack with sentencing guidelines up to 100 times as severe as those for cocaine Hcl. Starting from a flawed understanding of one specific drug is a bad place to start, but when you then attempt to extrapolate that flawed understanding to create generalizations about drugs in general you end up with even less useful assumptions.

Interestingly, since you are claiming guns don't cause violence, your first study also includes this gem of a sentence:

"The investigators attributed the high homicide rate they found among African Americans and Latinos to the increased availability and abuse of crack cocaine and the increased availability and lethal firepower of guns."

[Ted Bear]

As long as you have people like the NRA telling us that the answer to gun violence is MORE guns, we will never reduce gun violence.

OP...there are a myriad of laws, legislation and controls meant to stop gun violence. None of them are effective.

There is one interpretation of the Second Amendment that people believe 'gives them the right to carry a gun'. That is not exactly what the second amendment says. Regardless, the only answer to reduced gun violence is fewer guns. You can write a very worthy paper on how this meshes/conflicts with people's interpretation of the second amendment.

Society has moved forward, and the practical use of handguns is limited. Lock them up at ranges, inventory them in , and out, and the ammo as well, and you will greatly reduce hand gun violence. How, if at all, that conflicts with people's rights would make for a great paper.

[Nonesuch]

You can make up all the intepretations of the second amendment you want. Chicago and Illinois made up their own, and held onto it for decades. End result was that the US Supreme Court decided against them, and the City of Chicago wrote a check to the NRA for $1.4 million dollars, and nearly all "gun" laws were rolled back by the courts in 2012 and 2013.

And what happens to the crime rate when gun control laws are overturned? In in 2013 the Chicago recorded the fewest killings since 1965 and saw its overall crime rate fall to level not seen since 1972. The number of shootings fell 24 percent from 2,448 to 1,864 between 2012 and 2013, and the number of shooting victims dropped from 3,066 to 2,328 for the same period. Further, the department said every police district in the city saw a reduction in crime and all but four of the city's 22 police districts saw the number of homicides either fall or remain the same as the year before. Chicago Homicides Down Drastically In 2013 To Fewest Murders Since 1965, Police Say

Originally Posted by Ted Bear

Regardless, the only answer to reduced gun violence is fewer guns.

Shouldn't we be working towards a reduction in violence, why the focus on gun violence to the exclusion of other forms of violence?

Society has moved forward, and the practical use of handguns is limited. Lock them up at ranges, inventory them in , and out, and the ammo as well, and you will greatly reduce hand gun violence.

So basically you are advocating OSHA for muggers and rapists?

Yes, society has moved forward -- The anti-handgun side has lost, and has lost big. Chicago lost their Catch-22 handgun ban on in 2010, and doubled down with new gun laws, which were again overturned in 2012. Illinois has only just now started to issue concealed carry licenses, but could have a half million permits by this time next year.

I agree, this is a big step for a state where Chicago and some suburbs banned ownership of handguns, where law-abiding citizens have been forbidden to carry concealed handguns for generations, a state which when others were relaxing restrictions, instead changed the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony solely because of pressure from Obama's friends and mentors. And none of these limits reduced "gun violence" or even regular old "violence" violence.

Now that 2014 has arrived and Illinos must allow law-abiding citizens (those with about $1K to spare, several days for training and paperwork, and months to wait) to carry handguns, do you honestly believe this change will increase "gun violence" in Illinois? If we look at the experience of other US states, the answer is no, unless you feel that self-defense is unacceptable "gun violence", but the guy who comes at you with a bat and demands your purse is perfectly normal "club" violence and goes in a different column.

[Bucktownbabe]

Originally Posted by zachhockey2

• Where does gun violence occur most often? (Poor, middle class, certain ethnic areas, etc)

Poor

Originally Posted by zachhockey2

• What can be done to limit guns and/or to keep guns out of the hands of irresponsible people?

Addressing the growing gap between the rich and the poor would be a good first step in addressing this and most other social ills in our nation.

Also, though I'm sure the Fox News Kool-Aid drinkers will not like this, it's going to take tougher gun laws nationwide, bringing us up to the standards of the rest of the developed world. Trying to have a gun-free area within the U.S. as it stands is like trying to have a smog-free area in Beijing or a green dye-free area in the Chicago River today.

[Bucktownbabe]

Originally Posted by Ted Bear

As long as you have people like the NRA telling us that the answer to gun violence is MORE guns, we will never reduce gun violence.

Yep. Especially as long as they own a major portion of our congress. Study after study shows that the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens want stricter access to certain types of weapons at the very least, but money talks.

[Bucktownbabe]

Originally Posted by Nonesuch

Shouldn't we be working towards a reduction in violence, why the focus on gun violence to the exclusion of other forms of violence?

While we shouldn't exclude other forms of violence, there is no denying that gun violence is the deadliest form and deserves the most attention. Other nations (the UK, for example) have higher violent crime rates than the U.S. but with far lower body counts, because it turns out that fists and knives are not as deadly as guns. Go figure.

[Nonesuch]

Trying to have a gun-free area within the U.S. as it stands is like trying to have a smog-free area in Beijing or a green dye-free area in the Chicago River today.

Sure, and trying to have a heroin-free area within the US is also impossible. We've outlawed smack for 100 years, yet it's openly sold on street corners in Chicago. Laws only deter the law-abiding.

For the last four years, Chicago's anti-gun laws have slowly been eroded as the city and state loses case after case in court. Yet over that same period, the homicide rate continues to decline. See What's really driving down murder rate (Chicago Sun-Times).


I got fed up with the crime (and corruption, and taxes) in Chicago so I moved to New Hampshire, where we have almost none of these, and basically no gun laws... yet a overall homicide rate about the same as the UK, and among the lowest violent crime rates in America (a fraction of the UK rate). It's almost as if having 1 in 3 adults owning a firearm has had the opposite effect as you propose.

Originally Posted by Bucktownbabe

While we shouldn't exclude other forms of violence, there is no denying that gun violence is the deadliest form and deserves the most attention. Other nations (the UK, for example) have higher violent crime rates than the U.S. but with far lower body counts, because it turns out that fists and knives are not as deadly as guns. Go figure.

Or maybe people in the UK aren't just as homicidal as people in certain US Cities?

The term "violent crime" covers a wide range of activity, and isn't recorded the same in the UK as in the USA. Also, most perpetrators of "violent" crime aren't actually intending to kill the victim, while most people realize that if you shoot somebody, they are likely to die. So let us compare intentional homicide rates instead.

Intentional homicide rate in USA for 2012 was 4.8, of which firearms homicides were about 3.6, giving a non-firearm homicide rate of 1.2. Coincidentally, the UK's homicide rate for the same period was... 1.2 In other words, America's non-firearms homicide rate is equal to the UK's total homicide rate. Even if disarmed, America would still have the same or higher rate of homicide as the UK.

I also recommend reading Ten mis-Truths About Guns and, getting back on topic, Chicago PD’s 2011 Murder Analysis Report.

[zachhockey2]

Whoa. I never expected so many replies.

Thank you to everyone for assisting me by sharing their opinions. I can't thank you enough! I think I have more than enough for my paper but there's nothing stopping the discussion from continuing if desired

Thanks again!