After any mass shooting there’s a furor of articles and opinion pieces about the need for reform. When considering that I think that more attention ought to be paid to the Department of Justice’s report (PDF) on crimes committed using firearms from 2019. The important passage is this one:
An estimated 287,400 prisoners had possessed a firearm during their offense. Among these, more than half (56%) had either stolen it (6%), found it at the scene of the crime (7%), or obtained it off the street or from the underground market (43%). Most of the remainder (25%) had obtained it from a family member or friend, or as a gift. Seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.
Taking that into account I think the greatest emphasis should be place on enforcing the laws already on the books. I wish that more states required that the transfer of ownership of firearms be done through a licensed firearm dealer which would include gifts to family or friends. That might have some small effect.
Failing that the federal government could require that nationally.
As far as I can tell the reforms that are usually proposed would have little or no effect and are targeted at solving problems that aren’t particularly great for reasons I don’t entirely understand.
Over half of all gun murders and about three-quarters mass killings are done by black males between 15 and 29. Almost every killing was done with a 9 mm automatic pistol.
(Fewer than 400 people are killed each year with rifles of all kinds. More people, almost twice as many are killed with bare hands, sticks and stones, and around 1200 to 1400 are killed with knives.)
There are only about 2 to 3 million young black men in the urban underclass, and only a few percent of them are gang bangers. I would be willing to bet that the total number of young black murderers in the US is only a couple of hundred thousand, maybe as few as 100,000 nationwide.
100,000 young black men armed with 9 mm autos. That is a manageable problem. If you arrested all of them, you would only increase the US prison population by 5%. It’s a rounding error on the 2 million prisoners we already have.
This small cohort commits its crimes against other urban blacks. They terrorize the neighborhoods they live in. Yet middle class and upperclass blacks protect them in the name of racial solidarity. Young middle class and upper middle class whites also protect them, due to white knight fantasies.
Because the murderers are a protected class, murder have increased substantially since BLM/Antifa began its rampage.
Just as people for open borders care nothing about working class people, the people protecting the 100,000 care nothing about poor black people. Nothing.
You may have noticed my comment on tech guns.
I’m fully aware that’s not a quick fix, BUT, we all know guns cannot be dis-invented or taken off the streets without violation of civil liberties.
We should be able, at this point to create a weapon so personalized it cannot be stolen and used any more than a cell phone.
If widely adopted that would leave millions of older guns on the street, BUT, communities can prohibit unauthorized concealed carry, and through stop and frisk, begin to harvest those weapons.
The more expensive, personalized handguns would be useless to criminals.
Over time, I think we would see improvement in homicide by gun rates.
This is something we have not yet tried, you cannot un-invent, so you improve.
It’s worse than that, Grey Shambler. The effect of going house to house and confiscating all firearms would not just be a “violation of civil liberties”. It would disarm legal gunowners while leaving the lawbreakers who are responsible for most crimes committed using firearms armed.
And, sadly, as bob sykes points out and to paraphrase Mao, the black community is the sea in which the majority of these lawbreakers swim. Asking black folk to turn in their sons and brothers to police whom they distrust is asking an awful lot but the violence won’t end until they do.
I never said go house to house. Stop and frisk, confiscate illegal guns.
Word spreads, guns are left home. By illegal, I mean by city ordinance.
This is not new.
We have a total about 19,000 homicides per year, 14,000 by gun (CDC numbers). A bit over 500 if you include shotguns under the long gun category.
” murder have increased substantially since BLM/Antifa began its rampage.”
But as the study cited by jan noted there were 25 deaths associated with the riots , very few were shootings by BLM or Antifa people. Mostly people being run over or shootings by police/security guards.
Steve
I know you never said that, GS, but that was what was done in Australia.
“Stop and frisk” is clearly unconstitutional (4th Amendment) as well as being rife with abuse. That’s why there the opposition to it is so great.
Hmm, a while back Stop and Frisk was denounced as racist by Democrats and was a cause du jour.
As to the present proposals, they do sound impressive and sure to get out the vote (and donations) next election. A serious proposal would include a constitutional amendment to cover search and seizure as well as firearms.
One of those subjects where people will produce whatever studies and stats you want. However, the rise in the rate is real and common sense would suggest that covid related frustrations, loss of faith in institutions and an its-open-season-because-I’m-a-victim mentality must play a role. Bob Sykes’ comments are a steely eyed take that progressive types won’t want to hear. (See steves bizarre deflection) Although I hadn’t seen the reference to over-representation in mass shootings; in fact I recently saw a stat claiming a statistically proportional ratio of mass shooters to ethnicity.
The underclass, particularly the black underclass, did not used to be this way. As recently as the early 60’s intact family, religious affiliation and other, economic, measures of social progress in the black community were improving. And then came the Great Society. Underclass women could marry the government, and not a husband. Its been downhill since then.
In any event, the solutions to these problems lie within, not in government or blaming people around you. If so called black leaders would spend more time delivering that message and not messages of victimhood, get even (reparations) or “don’t act white” (education) that community would be much better served. Not holding my breath.
Criminals are not in more affluent neighborhoods because middle income people will move. The poor people do not have that option. In places with especially ruthless criminals, “snitches get stitches”. (As a Deputy Sheriff, I never heard this, but that was 35 years ago.)
Like it or not, police brutality is rampant in poor neighborhoods. It is a combination of the high number of criminals and poor people. Neither group have many options, and for the police, “snitches get stitches” as well.
This is not limited to black people, the Stonewall riots were by gay men, and the riots were a response to police brutality. While some looting is a result of tension between residents and store owners, it is usually opportunists taking advantage of the chaos.
As hispanic neighborhoods increase to the influx of poor illegals, I expect many black criminals will be replaced by hispanic criminals, and with an unenforced border, the drug cartels can expand and consolidate their franchises.
Most likely, much of the gang wars are black gangs vs hispanic gangs over territory to control drug sales and distribution, and it will get much worse.
@steve
You cannot be stupid enough to think @bob sykes was referring to the ongoing riots, and since you seemingly believe that “statistics is science”, I can only assume that you are being disingenuous.
@Drew
It is not just that many of the people on the various welfare programs “were born into it”. The disincentives to get off of welfare is insidious, and in some cases, the disincentives to get out outweigh the incentives to stay in.
In Louisiana, Medicaid has no premiums, co-pays, or deductibles. You can work, but there is a maximum limit. If on 12/31, you are one penny over that limit, you must repay the whole year.
On Obamacare, the policies are the same for all income groups. You would get to choose from the same list as the poorest person, but the poor person would get a subsidy for the premium. The policies range from low premium with a high deductible to high premium with no deductible.
My premium may be subsidized, but I still have the co-pays and deductibles. Additionally, the “one penny” rule applies, and because of this, getting a pay raise may result in a potentially very large tax bill. Getting married and filing a joint return can have the same result.
So, getting a job, raise, or married can result in a large tax bill. It is likely that I will be penalized for any of these things, and most other welfare programs are as bad. I learned the hard way about the Earned Income Tax Credit. I would have saved almost $7,500 by getting married in January instead of the end of October.
Since I am on the government dole, my wife has Medicaid. She was working part time for Uber Eats, but I had to keep checking to ensure she did not exceed the limit. Contrary to what you might think, being on the government dole, having my wife on Medicaid, and having her trying to support me is humiliating and degrading.
Since I am with the VA, I am better off than most. They have programs to help vets get back into the workforce without going broke. You all can bad-mouth the VA all you want, but they try to keep vets working and off the dole. (On the downside, they will lock you up like an animal if you ask for help.)
This is actually an old problem with an old solution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0uCrA7ePno
My understanding is that Louisiana’s Medicaid is also more generous than that of many states which is one of the reasons that New Orleans has been a target destination for poor blacks from the Northeast.
Actually, Louisiana has had a public healthcare system since Huey Long was governor. Prior to Katrina, New Orleans’ Charity Hospital was where you went if you were poor. In addition to the ER, they had clinics for ongoing care. (I think Charity would enroll patients in Medicaid to get reimbursed.)
My friends on the right will be pleased to know that Charity was a no frills option. To my knowledge, there were no private beds, only open wards.
“since you seemingly believe that “statistics is science—
Nope, have never indicated that. I am responding to the claim that there are somewhere between 100,000 to 200,000 black murderers out there. Since you appear to be innumerate I will have to do the math for you. If we have 14,000 gun homicides a year, and about half are black, that makes 7000/year. About 5% of homicides are multiples and we close about 60% of homicide cases. So that leaves about 3000/year still “out there”. So 30 years of murderers out there at least or 60 years at the higher limit. Not that believable, especially since at least for the gang bangers early death is not unusual (they shoot each other) and frequent incarceration for other crimes is the norm.
Steve
@steve
I will go slow this time.
Since you could not refute @bob sykes, you deflected. Furthermore, most people understand that he means in the cities affected by the riots and that every riot may not have been officially sanctioned by BLM/Antifa.
For the sake of brevity, I am omitting additional qualifiers, but if you like, I can.
Numbers and data are useful for validating predictions. Using numbers and data to make and validate predictions leads to Malthusian conclusions. When the underlying numbers and data change, the predictions fail.
Like viruses, numbers and data mutate, and thus, the predicted effects change. Unmutated viruses are quite predictable, once the mechanism is understood. To test the effectiveness of a vaccine, a prediction is made, and numbers and data are used to validate or invalidate it.
Similarly, the numbers and data you cite for your murderer totals are misleading. Since every murderer is not caught, the number of murderers is likely greater than the number of new murderers per year, and neither of theses numbers can be determined using the number of murders per year.
This does not address murders by the same person or murderers who died by some means. None of this was addressed by you, nor have any of your analysis of numbers and data indicated you have ever considered anything similar.