Watching the news last night, I saw that the shooting in Omaha received only two minutes of coverage on the CBS Evening News. Am I the only one concerned that we have gotten to the point that a shooting spree has to have a death toll in the double digits to warrant major attention or outrage?
This is an issue of great interest and importance to Philadelphia. Over the past year, we have had over 300 murders. Yet what do we do...nothing.
What does our government do...nothing.
What has our local media been abuzz about, at a time when dead bodies are piling up all over the city? A pair of identity theives in a well to do apartment complex...
What is happening to us? Have we gotten that inured to violence that we are more concern about some people getting ripped off than a horde of dead poor people? Or is it just that poor people matter less than middle class or rich people?
And spare me the moaning about gun owners' rights! What about rights of everyone else in society? For example...
The right not to dodge bullets on the way to school.
The right not to need metal detectors in an emergency room.
The right not to need metal detectors in schools, universities, and a dozen other places.
The right not to have to live in a bloody armed camp!
I can already hear any Second Amendment lovers reading this saying, "Uh, those aren't in the state or federal constitution." Yeah, well, the right not to have someone pee on your leg isn't in the Constitution either. That's because it's filed under the general rule of a government's duty to maintain an orderly, safe society. A duty that our government doesn't seem interested in fulfilling.
Anyone have any ideas of how we can change this? My thought is that grassroots groups should begin targeting gun shops, particularly those with a reputation of shady dealings. Use all legal methods available to make it clear they are no longer welcome in our communities. Pickets, ostracizing gun shop owners and customers, all should be on the table.
Make no mistake. This is THE crisis facing Philadelphia, bigger than pay to play or any of the other ethical imbroglios in City Hall.
I don't think they are
I don't think they are disconnected. Pay-to-play kills job growth, effective education which sets the environment for violence every bit as much as lax gun laws and problems with law enforcement does.
Since we are beating on
Since we are beating on Nutter in the other thread lets quote him here where he's 100% on target.
One a month would not have stopped this troubled soul in Ohio and at best its a tool for driving down the availability (and up the prices) for illegal weapons here in the city - not eliminate them alltogether. If we don't address the social conditions for violence no gun law will protect us which is a lesson I think its vitally important for progressives to learn to achieve electoral success in a state like PA.
Only Part of The Issue
Admittedly, gun control is only part of the issue. I think I should make clear though that, for me, government gun control measures are only part of the issue. Let's face it, the people in Harrisburg, both Democrats and Republicans, are largely in hock to the NRA. It'll take citizen action, independent of or in coordination with the government, to start making progress. It would not be a cure all, but it would be a start.
As for the social factors involved, I do feel we need to address them, but I am not entirely certain we are capable of doing so. For instance, even if Michael Nutter wipes out pay to play on his first day in office (which I am not anticipating), our schools will probably still reek. (They do in any number of communities where pay to play is not a big issue.) We will need to do a wholesale culture change in many respects, but that will take decades.
Furthermore, I think violence is doing just as much to perpetrate poverty as pay to play. No businessman or woman in their right mind wants to set up shop in Baghdad.
The Expatriate
Irrelevance
As I frequently note, complicated problems have simple, easy-to-understand, wrong answers. Gun violence and gun control is yet another example of this.
I've noted elsewhere that I am both an advocate of fairly strict gun control legislation and an NRA-accredited Sharpshooter, 1st Bar (w/the medals to prove it). So, I piss off both sides of the debate. But, as even a cursory glance at US history will reveal, the 2nd Amendment and gun ownership have been part of US society since its inception, but the current spate of gun violence is relatively new. A reasonable conclusion, therefore, should be that the right to bear arms is not, in and of itself, the cause of such horrors as yesterday's shootings in Omaha, or the slaughter in Columbine, or the shootings by Sylvia Seegrist in 1985.
The problem, I suspect, has more to do w/an overall increase in societal violence. And this starts from the top. What has been the US' #1 response to problems domestic and international for much of the 20th century? War. Bomb or invade countries; declare a 'war on poverty,' or a 'war on drugs.' Look at our national past-time: over the 20th century, it changed from the pastoral, rural sport of baseball to the militaristic metaphors of football. Violence suffuses our society; how dare we be surprised when people merely act on the very suggestions which we shove down their throats from birth?
It took us much of a century to get into this problem; it could well take us just as long to get out of it. And it has to start at home, with parents teaching their children to value learning, + peace rather than the ignorance + war which are the only thing that the US seems able to produce today.
Speaking as a parent, I have no intention of ever letting my daughter (or future) children to play w/toy guns or the like. And I want them to be baseball fans before football fans. You may laugh, but the connection is far closer than you might think.
Food for thought,
-Z
Seems to me, there's a certain illogic in your post
You say that there is a long history of gun ownership without the kinds of problems we have with gun violence today.
Then you say that the reason for the increased violence is an overall increase of societal violence.
That means that you think that the conditions of the past can't be applied to today's environment (which is more violent).
There are countries where there are high crime rates and low gun violence: countries where there are low rates of gun ownership.
There are countries where there are high rates of gun ownership and low rates of gun violence: countries where there are low rates overall violence.
Combine high violence rates and high rates of gun ownership, and what do you get? High rates of gun violence.
Lowering rates of gun ownership will not reduct violence rates, but it may reduce rates of gun violence. Lowering violence rates would, definitely reduce gun violence, so reducing violence rates, obviously, would definitely be the best of all worlds. That should be of the first priority - but it isn't a reason not to try to reduce rates of gun ownership.
You say that there is a long
You say that there is a long history of gun ownership without the kinds of problems we have with gun violence today.
This is, I think, beyond argument.
Then you say that the reason for the increased violence is an overall increase of societal violence.
I am, rather, suggesting that this is a cause. I try not to make the mistake of positing simple soluions for complicated problems, as I mentioned above.
Lowering rates of gun ownership will not reduct violence rates, but it may reduce rates of gun violence. Lowering violence rates would, definitely reduce gun violence, so reducing violence rates, obviously, would definitely be the best of all worlds. That should be of the first priority - but it isn't a reason not to try to reduce rates of gun ownership.
As the tired cliche puts it, once guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Oversimplified? Naturally. I am strongly in favor of such gun control legislation as the one gun per month limit (only 12 guns per year? Heaven forfend...). But I would warn against any assumption that even the strictest gun control would reduce gun violence. Note: it is all but impossible to own a private firearm in Washington, DC (although that law is currently before the Supreme Court), and that city has a higher rate of gun violence than Philadelphia. Why? Because it's easy to obtain guns in neighboring Maryland and (especially) Virginia. The lesson to be learned is that criminals who want to obtain guns will do so, laws be damned.
-Z
Cut the Supply
"There is a long history of gun ownership without the kinds of problems we have with gun violence today."
I am not interested in what societal conditions were like in the 1950s. That society is dead and gone, forever. I am interested in a solution that will put an end to the violence in the here and now.
Furthermore, I know from personal experience that the "Once guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" argument doesn't tend to work out that way in reality. The fact is, if you cut off the supply of guns, the criminals have a rather difficult time getting any.
I know this from having lived in Great Britain for two years. Given the level of gun control in England, it is very difficult for most criminals to obtain guns. Most of those that do are members of gangs that have overseas connections. Even then, the level of gun violence is shockingly low. I remember the British being shocked at four shootings in two weeks in London, a city over three times the size of Philadelphia.
In England, they don't worry about gun culture-they worry about knife culture. Getting stabbed with a knife may kill you, but it's a hell of a lot easier to outrun a knife than a bullet.
The Expatriate
Once again, zorro
The point is that according to your own logic, past rates of violence when guns were prevelant is irrelevant - because we now live in a generally more violent society. So then, it shouldn't be part of your argument that gun violence rates are not a function of legal gun ownership rates.
Your contention is that making it more difficult to obtain guns legally wouldn't reduce gun violence. My contention is that it might. Given that making it harder to obtain guns legally would be a relatively minor difficulty to deal with in life, and that doing so might/maybe/could/ reduce gun violence by even a little bit, I'd say that it's worth a shot. And I simply don't buy the argument that making it harder to buy guns legally would start us on that notorious slippery slope of undermining the constitution.
As for DC; there is no way to say for certain what the gun violence rates would have been in that city if there had been no ban. Your statement that the high rate of gun violence there is because guns can be obtained from neighboring areas actually doesn't make sense to me. Why would the ability to obtain guns from Maryland make gun violence rates higher than it would if guns were easier to obtain legally in DC? Unless you go with the theory that the more people that own guns legally, the less gun violence there is, again, that statement seems illogical. You could have meant, I suppose, that the difficulty of obtaining guns legally in DC is irrelevant to gun violence rates there - but again, I'd say that there really is no way to use DC to prove such a point.
Please, don't misunderstand me
As I tried to make clear in my original post- as well as many times before- I favor fairly strict gun control legislation. Drive-by knifings are, as they say, quite rare.
My sole point- and one which neither of you addressed specifically- is that local gun bans are unlikely to eliminate gun violence. Might they lower it? Perhaps. But eliminate it? Doubtful. After all, the criminal elements who would be the intended targets of new gun control legislation aren't known for their adherence to laws of any sort.
This being the case, the best way to reduce their access to guns is via measures that reduce the overall supply of guns, especially via such means as one gun per month limits- which, you will note, I strongly support.
I would note, however, that in a federal system like the US, a person who is thwarted in an attempt to purchase a gun in one state can simply cross the border to another state + smuggle the gun from there (provided that the law in question isn't nationwide). Illegal? Absolutely. But, as I noted, criminals aren't noted for their adherence to the law.
Just don't expect miracles. Can we return to a past in which societal violence was lower? Probably not- it's even arguable that such a past never existed. But don't expect the (relatively) simple answer of gun control to solve the complicated issue of gun violence.
-Z