Worldwide gun control disscussion

[Ziggy Stardust]

If it is a cross-national comparison, why the fuck would I need to go into city-by-city listing when the averages speak for themselves?

To be fair, the average is essentially worthless as a measure of central tendency if the distribution is highly skewed, which I imagine the distribution of murder/crime rates in the U.S. would be. (Indeed, most rate/count distributions are highly skewed in my experience). It might be more informative to compare MEDIAN rates, rather than mean rates, to account for skew, because the median would be more nationally representative.

(Note I am not saying I disagree with the rest of your arguments or claiming the US doesn't have a huge violence problem, which is certainly exacerbated by our toxic gun culture, though it is by no means the only contributing factor. I am simply pointing out that Formless does have a point, statistically speaking.)

[K. A. Pital]

But is there a measure of tendency? It is a comparison. On the average, more people get killed in the US. That's it. That's the end point of this comparison.

Now, you can say that it's because there are some places where they die in such horrible numbers that other places, which are as safe as Western Europe / industrialized Asia, get dragged down.

How does this change the argument? "We have a ghetto problem where people murder each other routinely so our national statistics get spoiled". But that's exactly the point I made earlier - the US doesn't have a problem with guns alone, it has a problem with its entire culture. Political culture, social cultural norms, call it what you like.

That's also why, contrary to what some thought, I don't want to propose further regulations or "banning guns" in the US. Because the conservatives are right about one thing in their ridiculous little articles - "why you compare the US to Europe while excluding Mexico and Argentina, who have an enormous homicide rate?" - well, damn right.

The US has more in common with Mexico and Argentina, Latin America in general, culturally, especially if we are talking crime. Therefore, banning guns would not help much. It might help a little, but to help more, the US needs to become more like Canada. And that simply isn't happening.

[Grumman]

How does this change the argument? "We have a ghetto problem where people murder each other routinely so our national statistics get spoiled". But that's exactly the point I made earlier - the US doesn't have a problem with guns alone, it has a problem with its entire culture. Political culture, social cultural norms, call it what you like.

But it's not a problem with the entire culture, just the part that responds to its own poor circumstances by shooting itself in the foot.

[Joun_Lord]

The US has more in common with Mexico and Argentina, Latin America in general, culturally, especially if we are talking crime.

Thats not true. Thats impossible!!

Its only half true, maybe a quarter true. As others have pointed out taking the US as a whole is incorrect. The US as this great big fucked up leaky melting pot is highly varied. Quite a bit of the US is like Canada. But then parts are like Mexico.

The entire country doesn't have a culture problem/gun problem/violence problem, certain areas or states do. Some states are even safer on average then the EU average. Some nations in the EU are more violent then America's national average.

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics ... statistics

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder- ... tate#MRord

Now on average the US is more violent then the whole of the EU from what I can tell but by no means is the whole of the US some 3rd world wasteland. Just some parts are. But I'm sure some parts of the EU are, either on a national or local level.

I doubt you'd say you'd want to avoid the whole of the EU because Lithuania or Latvia (which is a real country I'm told and not the home of Dr Doom and I'm totally sure I'm the first to make that joke, totally sure) are apparently violent 3rd world shitholes.

[K. A. Pital]

I doubt you'd say you'd want to avoid the whole of the EU because Lithuania or Latvia (which is a real country I'm told and not the home of Dr Doom and I'm totally sure I'm the first to make that joke, totally sure) are apparently violent 3rd world shitholes.

I did not say the US was worse than Eastern Europe, mind you. Only Western Europe and industrialized Asia (China, Japan, S. Korea).

I doubt Lithuania or Lativa could as much as make a tiny dent in the EU average homicide rate, as the EU average is ridiculously low even including these nations. And their populations are miniscule.

The value for Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) in European Union was 1.11 as of 2011. As the graph below shows, over the past 16 years this indicator reached a maximum value of 2.13 in 1995 and a minimum value of 1.11 in 2011.

http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/europea ... icide-rate

So from what I see, if I combine this with this link of yours:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder- ... tate#MRord

Is that there's almost no states and no territories in the US that would have a homicide rate lower than the EU average. Lower than some nations in the EU - perhaps. Lower than average? No. Except for New Hampshire. Heh.

I am not sure just why this is so, and perhaps exploring the crime maps in greater detail could help (the US is, if we take GDP per capita, "richer" than the EU or industrialized Eastern Asia). But the fact remains.

[MKSheppard]

Analysis of 2013 Maryland Murder rates.

I had to do the temperature graph by hand, because if you tried doing a 3-color interpolation in excel, Fucking Baltimore skewed the colors so badly.

There's a goddamn good reason the joke around here when Sum of All Fears came out was that we would have given the villains of SOAF a medal for improving Baltimore.

[MKSheppard]

Washington DC were already dangerous enough, and I'm telling you that as a person from the god damn Third World.

Baltimore Homicides 2013.

Basically, stay on the mall or in NW DC, or anywhere other than the Inner Harbor in BodyMore and you're probably good.

[Formless]

If it is a cross-national comparison, why the fuck would I need to go into city-by-city listing when the averages speak for themselves?

To be fair, the average is essentially worthless as a measure of central tendency if the distribution is highly skewed, which I imagine the distribution of murder/crime rates in the U.S. would be. (Indeed, most rate/count distributions are highly skewed in my experience). It might be more informative to compare MEDIAN rates, rather than mean rates, to account for skew, because the median would be more nationally representative.

I was actually thinking that Variance should be accounted for, but yes. If you are using a simple comparison of central tendency for whatever reason (say because most laymen don't know why variance is important or what variance represents) then the median is almost always what you should use because of skew.

[K. A. Pital]

I have yet to hear a concise explanation from you just why exactly a higher average murder rate does not mean more people are killed in the US, period. Simple as that.

Variance is important, but you can't just weasel out by saying that it is all because some places are ultraviolent. That doesn't even begin to counter my point. Higher homicide rate = more murdered people per capita.

[LaCroix]

Yeah, so the statistic for the US and even US states is skewed because there are more murders in some regions (mostly cities) than in certain rural places.

The only proper reponse to that is "D'oh!".

The very same is applying to all the EU or every nation of the EU, and every state within these nations, down to the precincts. It's universal. If I gave you a map of Austria, it'd look virtally the same as the Baltimore color-code map above, with some places, especially Vienna being a huge red beacon, and most areas completely white. The 1.1 average is already including that.

So when we take a US State average murder rate and compare it with one of a a nation in Europe, we get a completely valid comparison.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is that by doing that, you don't have a valid conclusion about the US, you have a conclusion about the murderous parts of the US. And the same is true of Austria versus Vienna, or of any other country and its component parts. Saying "Americans kill each other at ahigher rate than people in Country X" is simply meaningless if what is really going on is that three quarters of Americans kill each other very rarely, but one quarter of Americans kill each other seven times faster than the corresponding quarter of Country-X-ians.

Because then the problem may not be that Americans have too many weapons or eat unwholesome cereal or something. The problem could be specific to how Americans as a whole deal with that minority in particular.

Asserting that all this detail collapses into "America is a dangerous country and Americans kill each other a lot" is oversimplifying things to the point where it becomes hard to make accurate predictions about the real world on the strength of the oversimplified model.

[Wild Zontargs]

An interesting post from Scott Adams on the psychological politics of gun control in the US:

Why Gun Control Can’t Be Solved in the USA

On average, Democrats (that’s my team*) use guns for shooting the innocent. We call that crime.

On average, Republicans use guns for sporting purposes and self-defense.

If you don’t believe me, you can check the statistics on the Internet that don’t exist. At least I couldn’t find any that looked credible.

But we do know that race and poverty are correlated. And we know that poverty and crime are correlated. And we know that race and political affiliation are correlated. Therefore, my team (Clinton) is more likely to use guns to shoot innocent people, whereas the other team (Trump) is more likely to use guns for sporting and defense.

That’s a gross generalization. Obviously. Your town might be totally different.

So it seems to me that gun control can’t be solved because Democrats are using guns to kill each other – and want it to stop – whereas Republicans are using guns to defend against Democrats. Psychologically, those are different risk profiles. And you can’t reconcile those interests, except on the margins. For example, both sides might agree that rocket launchers are a step too far. But Democrats are unlikely to talk Republicans out of gun ownership because it comes off as “Put down your gun so I can shoot you.”

Let’s all take a deep breath and shake off the mental discomfort I just induced in half of my readers. You can quibble with my unsupported assumptions about gun use, but keep in mind that my point is about psychology and about big group averages. If Republicans think they need guns to protect against Democrats, that’s their reality. And if Democrats believe guns make the world more dangerous for themselves, that is their reality. And they can both be right. Your risk profile is different from mine.

So let’s stop acting as if there is something like “common sense” gun control to be had if we all act reasonably. That’s not an option in this case because we all have different risk profiles when it comes to guns. My gun probably makes me safer, but perhaps yours makes you less safe. You can’t reconcile those interests.

Our situation in the United States is that people with different risk profiles are voting for their self-interests as they see it. There is no compromise to be had in this situation unless you brainwash one side or the other to see their self-interest differently. And I don’t see anyone with persuasion skills trying to do that on either side.

Fear always beats reason. So as long as Democrats are mostly using guns to shoot innocent people (intentionally or accidentally) and Republicans are mostly using guns for sport or self-defense, no compromise can be had.

If we had a real government – the kind that works – we would acknowledge that gun violence is not one big problem with one big solution. It is millions of people with different risk profiles voting their self-interest as they see it.

So stop acting like one side is stupid. Both sides of the gun issue are scared, and both have legitimate reasons to be that way. Neither side is “right.”

—

*I endorsed Clinton for president for my personal safety. I write about Trump’s powers of persuasion and it is not safe to live in California if people think you support Trump in any way. Also, I’m rich, so I don’t want anything to change in this country. The rest of you might have a different risk profile.

[TheFeniX]

I won't bother to argue the rest of his points because it doesn't seem worth it, but Adams making the correlation that black > poor > crime would add up if the vast majority of murders (actually, crime in general) weren't Intraracial. Poor whites are more likely to be Republican and generally stick to murdering each other. So where does this factor in to his idea?

Even then, saying "on average" Democrats use guns for crime is asinine. Democrats might be less likely to own a gun, but I've never actually bothered to look into it. As if you have to buy into "guns are bad" to vote Democrat. A big problem with the 2 party system is that a large majority of the populace, moderates, are left out because their values don't match up with either party.

[Terralthra]

Scott Adams is a known troll who argues incredibly disingenuously on a variety of topics. For example from that post, he "endorsed" Hillary Clinton "for his personal safety" because if he were to endorse Trump, he'd "be a top ten assassination target" in the race war to come if Clinton wins, whereas if Trump wins, liberals wouldn't start a race war and kill people.

[Channel72]

I have yet to hear a concise explanation from you just why exactly a higher average murder rate does not mean more people are killed in the US, period. Simple as that.

It does mean more people are killed in the US. It's simply that this fact isn't that interesting or useful. I mean, more people are killed on Earth than on Mars, but that also isn't a very useful fact.

I mean, the US is a huge country obviously, and the culture is different in different states.

But overall, I agree with the sentiment. I've lived in both the US and the Middle East, and honestly I've been way more scared for my safety in certain areas of New Jersey than anywhere I visited in Jordan or Israel.

[Joun_Lord]

Democrats might be less likely to own a gun, but I've never actually bothered to look into it.

According to a poll I found Dems are (atleast according to the poll, which polls tend to be fairly unreliable so take it was a grain of salt or 10 thousand) Dems are less likely to own guns then Republicans. Independents own guns nearly as much as Republicans do though.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... ouseholds/

Some surprising and not so surprising points in the poll. Not surprising that white people own gun more then non-whites. The northeast has far lower gun ownership rates then the rest of the country. Rural gun owners make up over half of all gun owners. People 30 and over are more likely to own guns then those in their late teens and 20s.

What is surprising is that moderate gun ownership is nearly as high as that of conservatards. Women own firearms nearly as much as men.

I do like one of the comments from the link......

When you look at gun ownership at a more granular (state) level, it is interesting to see that the wealthiest and most-educated states have the lowest rate of gun ownership. Combine that with the other data in this article, and the demographics of gun ownership become much more vivid: most guns are owned by poor, uneducated white people

Maybe poorer people are more likely to own a gun compared to wealthy people because wealthy people are more likely to live in an area where police response is superior and dregs of society that endanger people are less likely to flourish. Poor people, especially minorities, know they are less likely to be able to rely on law enforcement and in some cases are in danger from the police themselves.

Though another poll says rich people are more likely to own firearms then the very poor while the middle class are the most likely to own firearms. Again, maybe take the poll results with some skepticism.....

http://www.marketplace.org/2013/11/04/w ... and-income

[Thanas]

Reading comprehension, Thanas. I'm saying that you can't dismiss it when people bring up Finland and Norway precisely because they have both a high rate of gun ownership and a low rate of violent crime. That is the real reason those countries get brought up in these discussions. They are counterexamples to the idea that gun control is the only way to reduce gun crime.

That is not what he said. He specifically pointed out the breivik massacre. Maybe you are the one who should read the text?

Who are you talking about? I have not seen anyone but you bring up Breivik, and you never quoted the person who supposedly did. I have been paying attention to this conversation, but I suppose its possible that you and I are talking past one another because at no point did you make it clear who you were responding to specifically.

The article two fucking posts above mine, you imbecile. Jesus christ.

Then you’ve got countries like Norway, with extremely strict gun control. Their gun control laws are simply incomprehensible to half of Americans. Not only that, they are an ethnically and socially homogenous, tiny population, well off country, without our gang violence or drug problems. Their gun control laws are draconian by our standards. They make Chicago look like Boise. Surely that level of gun control will stop school shootings! Except of course for 2011 when a maniac killed 77 and injured 242 people, a body count which is absurdly high compared to anything which has happened America.

So....yeah. Reading comprehension and all that.

Again, which article? None of the ones I saw mentioned Brevik.

Again, reading comprehension and all that. It was fucking directly above my posts, close enough to fit on one screen.

[Kingmaker]

When you look at gun ownership at a more granular (state) level, it is interesting to see that the wealthiest and most-educated states have the lowest rate of gun ownership. Combine that with the other data in this article, and the demographics of gun ownership become much more vivid: most guns are owned by poor, uneducated white people

Maybe poorer people are more likely to own a gun compared to wealthy people because wealthy people are more likely to live in an area where police response is superior and dregs of society that endanger people are less likely to flourish. Poor people, especially minorities, know they are less likely to be able to rely on law enforcement and in some cases are in danger from the police themselves.

You always have to be wary when dealing with aggregation. It is possible that, e.g. wealthier states also tend to be more left-leaning and have greater stigmas against gun ownership (or better police, or whatever), so your trend line of wealth vs guns slopes downward. But then you look at individuals within states and find that rich people are more likely to own guns than poor people. Maybe that's because rich people can better afford guns, maybe they need them for peasant hunting. The point is that the slope of the trend line reverses and now wealth correlates positively with guns.

Or maybe it doesn't. Other factors, on their own or in interaction, may also be driving different ownership rate.

(No data was consulted in making this post; I merely wished to point out how seemingly contradictory observations like Joun_Lord noted can be reconciled via Simpson's Paradox; also, insert standard statistical caveats here.)

[TheFeniX]

According to a poll I found Dems are (atleast according to the poll, which polls tend to be fairly unreliable so take it was a grain of salt or 10 thousand) Dems are less likely to own guns then Republicans. Independents own guns nearly as much as Republicans do though.

Thanks. I knew about the moderates line, which is likely a big part of why Democrats don't actually go after guns. It's valuable property a large section of people they need for votes own. They may not be ideologically in line with Gun Nuts (who fight any legislation), but they also don't want anyone stealing their stuff.

Some surprising and not so surprising points in the poll. Not surprising that white people own gun more then non-whites. The northeast has far lower gun ownership rates then the rest of the country. Rural gun owners make up over half of all gun owners. People 30 and over are more likely to own guns then those in their late teens and 20s.

True, but "far lower" is subjective. While it's 3/4, it's still only 10% lower: Americans like guns. Gun Owners are a minority, but 30% is still a rather large minority.

When you look at gun ownership at a more granular (state) level, it is interesting to see that the wealthiest and most-educated states have the lowest rate of gun ownership. Combine that with the other data in this article, and the demographics of gun ownership become much more vivid: most guns are owned by poor, uneducated white people

Rural gun ownership has become part of a "lifestyle." But you can also factor in that shooting in rural areas is legal about everywhere, doesn't get the cops called on you. And can be a relatively cheap hobby (especially if you reload and hunt) considering these areas have shit for Internet and other physical entertainment outlets. Shooting guns is fun. Being able setup a shooting area pretty much anywhere safely is a huge bonus. People in city limits have to deal with a lot more bullshit for recreational firearms use.

Maybe poorer people are more likely to own a gun compared to wealthy people because wealthy people are more likely to live in an area where police response is superior and dregs of society that endanger people are less likely to flourish. Poor people, especially minorities, know they are less likely to be able to rely on law enforcement and in some cases are in danger from the police themselves.

True, but also that they are less likely to hunt. If they did, you can rent a gun. They are also more likely to have many other time sinks that don't involve having to find a poorly ventilated and crowded city gun range or drive a large distance to get out of city limits.

Though another poll says rich people are more likely to own firearms then the very poor while the middle class are the most likely to own firearms. Again, maybe take the poll results with some skepticism.....

Polls can suck because people don't like informing strangers they own guns (or any valuable property) and you still need money to purchase some of the high-dollar firearms. A person with money might by more than proud to state he/she owns many valuable guns. Some poor hick might not. I would expect some poor country boy to own something like a Mossberg Pump. Middle class and up can spring for shit like Benelli or Beretta. Those types of guns are more status symbols.

[K. A. Pital]

The problem is that by doing that, you don't have a valid conclusion about the US, you have a conclusion about the murderous parts of the US. And the same is true of Austria versus Vienna, or of any other country and its component parts. Saying "Americans kill each other at ahigher rate than people in Country X" is simply meaningless if what is really going on is that three quarters of Americans kill each other very rarely, but one quarter of Americans kill each other seven times faster than the corresponding quarter of Country-X-ians.

Because then the problem may not be that Americans have too many weapons or eat unwholesome cereal or something. The problem could be specific to how Americans as a whole deal with that minority in particular.

Asserting that all this detail collapses into "America is a dangerous country and Americans kill each other a lot" is oversimplifying things to the point where it becomes hard to make accurate predictions about the real world on the strength of the oversimplified model.

Why don't we have a valid conclusion about the US? Since when "murderous parts of the US" stopped being the US? Problem is, other nations have murderous parts too: but they are either less murderous or the other parts are more peaceful, so the average number turns out to be lower. Nations with a high average homicide rate are dangerous.

I just don't understand the point of disagreement. You have a conclusion about the nation: either it is more dangerous overall or there are places which are extremely dangerous, while other places are just the same as elsewhere. But the by-state comparison provided here just recently doesn't show just a few outliers. It also shows that on the average, most US states have a higher homicide rate than Western European or industrialized Asian nations.

Back to the gun problem: homicide with a firearm is much easier than homicide with a gun. So a nation which has a high crime rate would not benefit from firearm accessibility - instead, it would simply have firearm homicides as being almost the norm, the default. On the other hand, a nation that has a low violent crime rate would not be affected by high rates of gun ownership as people are on the average far less likely to commit violent crimes like homicide; thus the necessity to control guns also decreases.

Simple.

[Elheru Aran]

Why don't we have a valid conclusion about the US? Since when "murderous parts of the US" stopped being the US? Problem is, other nations have murderous parts too: but they are either less murderous or the other parts are more peaceful, so the average number turns out to be lower. Nations with a high average homicide rate are dangerous.

I just don't understand the point of disagreement. You have a conclusion about the nation: either it is more dangerous overall or there are places which are extremely dangerous, while other places are just the same as elsewhere. But the by-state comparison provided here just recently doesn't show just a few outliers. It also shows that on the average, most US states have a higher homicide rate than Western European or industrialized Asian nations.

The problem is that many of those US states are literally the size of these Western European or Asian nations in and of themselves. And the average homicide rates tend to be heavily skewed by crime-prone urban areas, as Shep demonstrated upthread. The rest of the state outside of the urban areas tends to be much more placid. Yes, averaged out, it makes it appear as though the whole state has a murder rate that's THIS much... but frankly that's not true.

And I suspect the same would be true of most European countries-- the majority of violent crime happens in the cities. Which, it should be noted, tend to be more densely populated and closer together than the American equivalent. The US simply has a LOT more space that's not 'city' or 'urban', and the low statistics for those will be on the extreme end of the average. I live ~30 miles out of the city of Atlanta, and not a whole lot happens out here-- drunks, wife-beating, and occasional robberies mainly.

A far better comparison would be crime rates in European cities versus those in US cities. That, at least, would be urban area versus urban area. Comparing whole countries is simply too broad and disingenuous when the US is nearly an order of magnitude bigger than some of them. Breaking it down by state is vaguely better, but ignores the specific statistics within those states.

[K. A. Pital]

Isn't that a counter-argument though, if you think about it? I mean, if less of the US is city (compared to Europe, which is more densely populated and urbanized), shouldn't the homicide rate in the US be lower?

Nonetheless:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... urder_rate

European cities don't even appear on that list, US cities do.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... rates.html

[Simon_Jester]

EDIT: Accidental double post, please delete the post above.

The problem is that by doing that, you don't have a valid conclusion about the US, you have a conclusion about the murderous parts of the US. And the same is true of Austria versus Vienna, or of any other country and its component parts. Saying "Americans kill each other at ahigher rate than people in Country X" is simply meaningless if what is really going on is that three quarters of Americans kill each other very rarely, but one quarter of Americans kill each other seven times faster than the corresponding quarter of Country-X-ians.

Because then the problem may not be that Americans have too many weapons or eat unwholesome cereal or something. The problem could be specific to how Americans as a whole deal with that minority in particular.

Asserting that all this detail collapses into "America is a dangerous country and Americans kill each other a lot" is oversimplifying things to the point where it becomes hard to make accurate predictions about the real world on the strength of the oversimplified model.

Why don't we have a valid conclusion about the US? Since when "murderous parts of the US" stopped being the US? Problem is, other nations have murderous parts too: but they are either less murderous or the other parts are more peaceful, so the average number turns out to be lower. Nations with a high average homicide rate are dangerous.

The problem is when you start trying to draw conclusions like "therefore, the US should enact more gun control at the federal level" or "therefore, no one should go to any place in the US."

The high murder rate in the US isn't actionable, useful information until it is disaggregated, analyzed, and treated as a bundle of separate facts. To understand how the US's murder rate affects you, you must understand where the murders are located, what triggers them, and so on.

This is equally true of crime in other countries, or for that matter any other aggregate trend that tries to take the average of a huge number of very dissimilar places and people.

I just don't understand the point of disagreement. You have a conclusion about the nation: either it is more dangerous overall or there are places which are extremely dangerous, while other places are just the same as elsewhere. But the by-state comparison provided here just recently doesn't show just a few outliers. It also shows that on the average, most US states have a higher homicide rate than Western European or industrialized Asian nations.

The US has worse race relations than industrialized Asian nations, and arguably worse than Western European nations. The US has worse poverty problems than most European nations due to an inferior welfare system. The US has drug problems that contribute to the crime problems.

The thing I'm trying to get at is that while in some rhetorical sense, "the US is dangerous" may be a claim consistent with the facts... As soon as you try to draw meaningful conclusions from that claim, you run into problems because it is a misleading statement even if it's true. It is a rhetorically strong statement, but a weak one for purposes of using reason and facts to learn the truth and seek solutions.

Back to the gun problem: homicide with a firearm is much easier than homicide with a gun. So a nation which has a high crime rate would not benefit from firearm accessibility - instead, it would simply have firearm homicides as being almost the norm, the default. On the other hand, a nation that has a low violent crime rate would not be affected by high rates of gun ownership as people are on the average far less likely to commit violent crimes like homicide; thus the necessity to control guns also decreases.

[/quote]The catch is that it is not obvious that restricting gun availability will lower a high crime rate, and that is the policy measure that's being debated in the US. Controlling the guns more effectively may simply result in gangs murdering each other with knives and crowbars, secure in the knowledge that no one is likely to pull a gun on them.

[TheFeniX]

Taking St. Louis into account: There were 188 murders in 2015. The hotspots are Baden (92% Black) and Vanderlou (97% Black). I could go through each of the other hotspots, but you're just likely to see more poor black communities. There's 77,000 unemployed in the city. Low income and high poverty. (Redundant, I know).

Other areas show very little crime. Wydown (3% black) being one with only a few vehicle break-ins and thefts.

Now, I could go all racist and say "blacks are bad business," but that would be stupid. You've got an underclass in this country. There's more than enough African-Americans still alive and in a working age who grew up when "boy" was a common term used for them. Where they had to enter a store from the back-entrance, if they could even go in at all. Owning land was a gamble, even if you had the money, and risky due to being run off for not knowing your place. There's still so. much. fucking. racism. in this country. In Texas... man, I'm not even going to go into it.

Other races, even whites, deal with poverty and lack of means to uplift themselves, but there's a whole load of shit keeping African-Americans, and other choice minorities, down. They have no money, no safety nets, and are almost required to turn to crime just to stay off the streets. But they just keep killing each other so everyone can avoid the real problem and say "Man, America sucks. So violent, must be all the guns."

The US sucking has nothing to do with guns. It's a scapegoat so no one has to actually fix the problem. They can say "BAN HI-CAP MAGS" and high-five like they did something productive. Until people kick up a shitstorm, there's not much going to be done. And African-Americans were/are targeted specifically with laws to get as many felony convictions as possible because for some stupid reason: being a felon means you can't vote.

Look at this map. Why the fuck does being imprisoned or on probation mean you can't vote? You'd think you'd have something to say about the people who locked you up.

I'm not absolving the African-American community of some responsibility here, but they aren't nearly as culpable as racist shitlords would have you believe.

[Grumman]

Why the fuck does being imprisoned or on probation mean you can't vote? You'd think you'd have something to say about the people who locked you up.

Laws are not just for other people. If you refuse to be bound by the law, why should you have any say in the laws that bind others?