Interesting Analysis of Chicago's Violence

[Excaliber]

This New York Post article makes a credible case that Chicago's violence is not uniformly distributed and is not due to the availability of guns.

It concludes that it is heavily concentrated in neighborhoods with certain readily identifiable social conditions, and those conditions are the cause of the violence.

[ELB]

Surprising. I haven't noticed the NY Post being particularly rational about guns in the past. This is an opinion piece by Rich Lowry, who also writes for the National Review. Not a lefty writer in other words. I wonder how long he will last at the post.

Note that the Chicago police chief he chides for focusing on guns made his career as NYC police brass. He was brought to Chicago to bring NYC-type policing to town, including the famous...or infamous...CompStat. See Second City Cop for one cop's opinion on Compstat and McCarthy.

He (Lowry) is, of course, dead on target. I think it has long been known that in any city it is a relatively small percentage of the city that shares dysfunctional culture that is responsible for most serious crime. But in those same cities it is a no-no to focus on this; so much easier to blame the NRA.

I think I would argue with the assertion that it is the "social conditions" that cause people to be violent gang criminals unless you count cultural characteristics as "social conditions". If that were the case, then providing money, building housing, and making loans easy to obtain should turn this around. But of course it doesn't. It is the constant cultural emphasis on victimization, blaming other parts of society for one's own problems, and allowing people to excuse themselves for bad behavior because somehow others are responsible for it, denigrating the very things that lets other parts of society move ahead, that creates a self-defeating society. There are lots of poor areas and poor societies, but they don't all go gang-banger.

I wish he had linked to the study he mentioned, the one by Andrew Papachristos. I shall have to go googling.

[Beiruty]

Gangs, drugs and guns (tool of the trade). What did you expect? When not only adult men are in the gang, but It is the whole family. Boys, Girls and even kids and momas and grandma. You know when a gang banger runs to his girl to hide his piece or use his 10-yr old bro to hand out "tickets" and collect "dough", that is whole neighborhood are living in mad max outpost. The shootings only come with the territory.

[howdy]

How can the liberal dispute this:

"Overall, according to Chicago magazine, the rate of nonfatal gunshot injury in Chicago was 46.5 per 100,000 from 2006 to 2012. But it was only 1.62 per 100,000 for whites. For blacks, it was 112.83 per 100,000. For black males, 239.77, and for black males aged 18-34, 599.65, or “a staggering one in 200.”