3 ms·

Remove just four cities from US homicide rates and the USA drops from one of the highest on the per-capita murder list to one of the lowest. Interestingly, thos

Remove just four cities from US homicide rates and the USA drops from one of the highest on the per-capita murder list to one of the lowest. Interestingly, those cities also have the highest level of gun control.

67726e 13y ago
The question then becomes do those cities have tight gun control because of or in spite of the high rate of gun crimes?
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Considering that those cities have what amount to complete bans on gun possession, it's "in spite of." Total prohibition doesn't work.
  - ladon86 13y ago
    ...in a country which only has small islands of total prohibition surrounded by a sea of millions of available guns.
    - ctdonath 13y ago
      Cocaine and other imported hard drugs are easily available nationwide despite total national prohibition and a militaristic level of governmental opposition to importation. Take all the guns away, and demand will find a supply nonetheless.
      - anologwintermut 13y ago
        Yeah, we'd have trouble cracking down on people growing Glock's in fields or manufacturing AR's from scratch with stuff they bought from CVS. And it would be impossible to stop gun's from being imported from Latin American with it's renowned industrial base for manufacturing firearms.
        bmelton 13y ago
        I feel like there's a common misconception that guns are hard to make. They're not. Even 'assault weapons', by and large, are extremely simple systems. This guy[1] made an AK47 out of a shovel, for example. Similarly, guns are nearing the 'grows on trees' level of simplicity with 3D printing. [1] - http://i1178.photobucket.com/albums/x368/_ak_74_/shovel_ak/54.jpg http://i1178.photobucket.com/albums/x368/_ak_74_/shovel_ak/5...
        anologwintermut 13y ago
        Gun's are not that hard to make, I assume they are fairly hard to make in volume and quality. Australia, which has rather strict gun laws, does not, by my understanding, have a massive problem with illegal guns being manufactured. Nor does England. As for the hilarious "assault shovel", my understanding was he made the receiver but purchased the barrel and most of the other parts. It just happens that because of US law, the receiver is the regulated part.
        hga 13y ago
        "And it would be impossible to stop gun's from being imported from Latin American with it's renowned industrial base for manufacturing firearms." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_(manufacturer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_(manufacturer) The gun my father most recently bought is from them (a 9mm 5 round revolver, a fairly nice piece of work).
        ctdonath 13y ago
        Let's step past the snide insults and look at relevant realities: Glocks are a remarkably high-density-value product. One cubic meter of quintessential Glocks (model 17 gen 4) would have a street value of at least US$500,000. This is typical of medium-quality handguns, whatever the make & model. A way to acquire & distribute them would be found. ARs can be made from scratch with stuff bought from Lowes or Home Depot (or pretty much any decent hardware store). Go look up "80% AR receiver" for a good look. AK47s are much easier to make, and have equivalent gross performance. There is of course the current meme regarding "3D printed guns". Not quite up to desired quality yet, but those involved in the project(s) are making amazing progress in a very short time. All those types are at the upper end of complexity. Simpler designs (bolt/break/lever/revolver action) are much easier to make; we have a rich history of domestic manufacture thereof involving low-tech processes. The only "hard part" about making guns is the barrel and primers. Hard, but not impossible for individuals. Remember the spark that started the revolution resulting in the USA was, in fact, gun control (look up "Lexington and Concord"). Our culture of gun ownership by upstanding citizens is very deeply ingrained, and any suggestion of curtailing it is intensely opposed. Were all guns banned & confiscated within US borders, the rate of garage/basement gun manufacturing would be astounding. Guns are simple machines. Get a cartridge into a rifled tube, provide sufficient structural support, impact the primer, bang. They're not hard to make. Quality manufacturing has raised our de facto expectations, but workable mundane products can be turned out by a guy with a lathe and a hacksaw. It's not magic.
      - GVIrish 13y ago
        As long as there is the insanely high profit motive with the drug war, there'll be a black market for firearms. Drug cartels are building freaking SUBMARINES to smuggle drugs for crying out loud. They absolutely would make their own firearms if guns were banned in the United States. Never mind the fact that there are currently somewhere around 300 million firearms in private hands today in the US. It would take well over 100 years to get all of those out of circulation if you were somehow able to ban them today. And chances are the 80 million armed Americans wouldn't allow the government to take those guns anyway.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      Or in a country where anyone can make an AK47 in his garage for less than $100 by pressing a shovel into the shape of an AK receiver. Pretty soon, we'll be entering an area where printable 3D guns are less likely to blow up in one's face, which raises the production costs a little bit in the short term, but which will likely result in even cheaper firearms manufacture.
  - anologwintermut 13y ago
    Total prohibition doesn't work because it doesn't exist: you can go two states down and get guns. This doesn't mean prohibition is a good idea, but saying it's been tried is inaccurate : no one thinks gun laws will seriously cause criminals to change their minds on having guns. People think guns law's will prevent criminals from getting guns.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      Oddly enough though, the inverse does exist. If you flood a township with guns, as they did in Kennesaw, Georgia in the early 80s; By passing a law requiring every head of household to own a firearm, they were able to drop crime in all forms by over 80% in the township proper. 25 years later they were able to celebrate 25 years without a single murder in the township, despite population growth of 500%. Also interestingly, the areas immediately surrounding Kennesaw have the same levels of crime as ever, which illustrates that yes, they didn't solve crime, they only displaced it. On a crime map, there's a ring of 'red', like a corona, around the township proper. It's amazingly curious.
bmelton 13y ago
I don't have the numbers on hand, but I've tested that claim in the past, and have to say that it isn't true. Without knowing which 4 cities you were citing, let's assume that we're talking about 4 Chicagos (the national worst), whose homicide tally for last year was 500 (435 gun-based), that means we could remove as much as 2,000 from the intentional homicide rate, which doesn't move us substantially along the scale, and certainly doesn't put is within even a couple dozen of the bottom of the list. If we refine the parameters even to be more optimistic, and limit it from first-world countries with similar domestic output, it still doesn't push us substantially down the list to consider us even remotely "one of the lowest". Of note, perhaps, is that I am a civil rights supporter, and I believe that the second amendment grants us the right to keep and bear arms without infringement. Regardless, I tried for a few days to make that claim reconcile with reality, and couldn't. If anybody knows of the criteria chosen, I'd gladly re-do the numbers, but I feel it would have to stack the deck pretty deliberately to get even close to that outcome in actuality.
- migrantgeek 13y ago
  I've never heard this claim however I was interested so I took the 2011 data for US cities with a population of 250K or more and it looks like the distribution isn't even close to support that claim although Detroit looks awful https://docs.google.com/a/migrantgeek.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0Aow_fWW33jg_dDcyNTRuRUhOYkZrS3NEZFJLcW9Pc2c&oid=2&zx=sdzm9skyw407 https://docs.google.com/a/migrantgeek.com/spreadsheet/oimg?k...
- ctdonath 13y ago
  The extent of the jurisdiction may be a squishy factor. The "greater metropolitan area" may extend well beyond the strictly-speaking city limits.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Very fine point. I don't know that I've ever looked at data that represented crime in "a given city" and "surrounding areas". Might indeed be the tipping point. Thanks!

67726e 13y ago

The question then becomes do those cities have tight gun control because of or in spite of the high rate of gun crimes?

ctdonath 13y ago
Considering that those cities have what amount to complete bans on gun possession, it's "in spite of." Total prohibition doesn't work.
- ladon86 13y ago
  ...in a country which only has small islands of total prohibition surrounded by a sea of millions of available guns.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    Cocaine and other imported hard drugs are easily available nationwide despite total national prohibition and a militaristic level of governmental opposition to importation. Take all the guns away, and demand will find a supply nonetheless.
    - anologwintermut 13y ago
      Yeah, we'd have trouble cracking down on people growing Glock's in fields or manufacturing AR's from scratch with stuff they bought from CVS. And it would be impossible to stop gun's from being imported from Latin American with it's renowned industrial base for manufacturing firearms.
      - bmelton 13y ago
        I feel like there's a common misconception that guns are hard to make. They're not. Even 'assault weapons', by and large, are extremely simple systems. This guy[1] made an AK47 out of a shovel, for example. Similarly, guns are nearing the 'grows on trees' level of simplicity with 3D printing. [1] - http://i1178.photobucket.com/albums/x368/_ak_74_/shovel_ak/54.jpg http://i1178.photobucket.com/albums/x368/_ak_74_/shovel_ak/5...
        anologwintermut 13y ago
        Gun's are not that hard to make, I assume they are fairly hard to make in volume and quality. Australia, which has rather strict gun laws, does not, by my understanding, have a massive problem with illegal guns being manufactured. Nor does England. As for the hilarious "assault shovel", my understanding was he made the receiver but purchased the barrel and most of the other parts. It just happens that because of US law, the receiver is the regulated part.
      - hga 13y ago
        "And it would be impossible to stop gun's from being imported from Latin American with it's renowned industrial base for manufacturing firearms." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_(manufacturer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_(manufacturer) The gun my father most recently bought is from them (a 9mm 5 round revolver, a fairly nice piece of work).
      - ctdonath 13y ago
        Let's step past the snide insults and look at relevant realities: Glocks are a remarkably high-density-value product. One cubic meter of quintessential Glocks (model 17 gen 4) would have a street value of at least US$500,000. This is typical of medium-quality handguns, whatever the make & model. A way to acquire & distribute them would be found. ARs can be made from scratch with stuff bought from Lowes or Home Depot (or pretty much any decent hardware store). Go look up "80% AR receiver" for a good look. AK47s are much easier to make, and have equivalent gross performance. There is of course the current meme regarding "3D printed guns". Not quite up to desired quality yet, but those involved in the project(s) are making amazing progress in a very short time. All those types are at the upper end of complexity. Simpler designs (bolt/break/lever/revolver action) are much easier to make; we have a rich history of domestic manufacture thereof involving low-tech processes. The only "hard part" about making guns is the barrel and primers. Hard, but not impossible for individuals. Remember the spark that started the revolution resulting in the USA was, in fact, gun control (look up "Lexington and Concord"). Our culture of gun ownership by upstanding citizens is very deeply ingrained, and any suggestion of curtailing it is intensely opposed. Were all guns banned & confiscated within US borders, the rate of garage/basement gun manufacturing would be astounding. Guns are simple machines. Get a cartridge into a rifled tube, provide sufficient structural support, impact the primer, bang. They're not hard to make. Quality manufacturing has raised our de facto expectations, but workable mundane products can be turned out by a guy with a lathe and a hacksaw. It's not magic.
    - GVIrish 13y ago
      As long as there is the insanely high profit motive with the drug war, there'll be a black market for firearms. Drug cartels are building freaking SUBMARINES to smuggle drugs for crying out loud. They absolutely would make their own firearms if guns were banned in the United States. Never mind the fact that there are currently somewhere around 300 million firearms in private hands today in the US. It would take well over 100 years to get all of those out of circulation if you were somehow able to ban them today. And chances are the 80 million armed Americans wouldn't allow the government to take those guns anyway.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Or in a country where anyone can make an AK47 in his garage for less than $100 by pressing a shovel into the shape of an AK receiver. Pretty soon, we'll be entering an area where printable 3D guns are less likely to blow up in one's face, which raises the production costs a little bit in the short term, but which will likely result in even cheaper firearms manufacture.
- anologwintermut 13y ago
  Total prohibition doesn't work because it doesn't exist: you can go two states down and get guns. This doesn't mean prohibition is a good idea, but saying it's been tried is inaccurate : no one thinks gun laws will seriously cause criminals to change their minds on having guns. People think guns law's will prevent criminals from getting guns.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Oddly enough though, the inverse does exist. If you flood a township with guns, as they did in Kennesaw, Georgia in the early 80s; By passing a law requiring every head of household to own a firearm, they were able to drop crime in all forms by over 80% in the township proper. 25 years later they were able to celebrate 25 years without a single murder in the township, despite population growth of 500%. Also interestingly, the areas immediately surrounding Kennesaw have the same levels of crime as ever, which illustrates that yes, they didn't solve crime, they only displaced it. On a crime map, there's a ring of 'red', like a corona, around the township proper. It's amazingly curious.

bmelton 13y ago

I don't have the numbers on hand, but I've tested that claim in the past, and have to say that it isn't true. Without knowing which 4 cities you were citing, let's assume that we're talking about 4 Chicagos (the national worst), whose homicide tally for last year was 500 (435 gun-based), that means we could remove as much as 2,000 from the intentional homicide rate, which doesn't move us substantially along the scale, and certainly doesn't put is within even a couple dozen of the bottom of the list. If we refine the parameters even to be more optimistic, and limit it from first-world countries with similar domestic output, it still doesn't push us substantially down the list to consider us even remotely "one of the lowest". Of note, perhaps, is that I am a civil rights supporter, and I believe that the second amendment grants us the right to keep and bear arms without infringement. Regardless, I tried for a few days to make that claim reconcile with reality, and couldn't. If anybody knows of the criteria chosen, I'd gladly re-do the numbers, but I feel it would have to stack the deck pretty deliberately to get even close to that outcome in actuality.

migrantgeek 13y ago
I've never heard this claim however I was interested so I took the 2011 data for US cities with a population of 250K or more and it looks like the distribution isn't even close to support that claim although Detroit looks awful https://docs.google.com/a/migrantgeek.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0Aow_fWW33jg_dDcyNTRuRUhOYkZrS3NEZFJLcW9Pc2c&oid=2&zx=sdzm9skyw407 https://docs.google.com/a/migrantgeek.com/spreadsheet/oimg?k...
ctdonath 13y ago
The extent of the jurisdiction may be a squishy factor. The "greater metropolitan area" may extend well beyond the strictly-speaking city limits.
- bmelton 13y ago
  Very fine point. I don't know that I've ever looked at data that represented crime in "a given city" and "surrounding areas". Might indeed be the tipping point. Thanks!