Gunshot Demographics
The ugly underbelly of the anti-gun-rights position
Reproduced by kind permission of Alan Korwin, of GunLaws.com, from the original article.
While anti-rights activists speak emotionally about "gun violence", "gun deaths", "human tragedy", and saving lives, what they refuse to say is this —
Homicide in America has demographic, geographic, social and economic factors which, if acknowledged and openly discussed, would transform the debate, and place blame where it really belongs: on the causes and people that fuel the violence we hear about (but rarely actually see for ourselves, except on TV "news").
The real blame is hidden, because the truth is so painful. Crime is not spread across the streets of America. Crime, and crime using guns, happens in isolated areas for well known reasons the media and politicians hide from you.
But, it’s useful to blame guns instead of criminals, and blame guns instead of politicians and social policies, and blame guns instead of festering pesthole neighborhoods, in the effort to disarm the public and transfer power to the government and away from the people.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Thank you, Baltimore Sun newspaper, for posting the interactive maps that define the problem clearly — at last (blue is choking, green is blunt force, red is shooting, black is stabbing, white is undetermined) :
BALTIMORE: All homicide victims, 2007
BALTIMORE: Black homicide victims, 2007
BALTIMORE: White homicide victims, 2007
Try the maps yourself, it's fun, change the ages, sex, race, etc. and see what happens: http://tinyurl.com/6a4jkn
The "gun problem" is not about guns. It’s about people, select groups of people. This isn’t a stereotype, it’s a fact.
These Baltimore Sun maps show a terrible problem but do not clarify who the murderers are. Police have those maps.
Don’t shoot me, I’m only the messenger. Blame the newspaper for letting the dirty little secret out — it’s not a gun or murder problem, it’s a demographic problem. Is "demographic" a code word for "the bad part of town"?
Public Enemy Number One Defined:
Many of these aren’t "gun deaths" at all, they are "war deaths". It’s the endless fruitless government–run War On Some Drugs. It’s a declared war. Combatants in the war are killing each other.
End the war, declare a truce, call for an armistice — Watch a large part of the "gun problem" fade away. But that would hurt the effort to disarm the public, and would end many of the jobs programs fraudulently labelled the war on drugs, so don’t expect it to happen any time soon.
Thank you Chicago Tribune for doing the same thing:
CHICAGO MURDERS BY AREA, 2008
Chicago Tribune Data and Map
Public Enemy Number One Officially Identified:
In a story almost without precedent, CBS identified Chicago’s high murder rate as almost totally gang related and geographically isolated. In modern America, that identifies these as war deaths in the War on Some Drugs, and not "gun deaths" as the media likes to frame the argument (to vilify firearms and create public fear).
With surprising candor, CBS announced, "Gang and gun violence continue to be the dominating threat on our streets," according to a police e-mail to CBS. "Up to 60 percent of the shootings are gang related. More than 90 percent of the offenders have criminal histories and up to 80 percent of the victims have criminal histories".
It’s unclear how the police concluded that only 60% of these crimes are gang related, when 90% of the shooters have criminal records and 80% of the victims do too. It’s also a fairly typical police distortion to suggest gun violence is the dominant threat "on our streets" when these gangland rubouts happen on their streets (see map), and normal citizens who have fled the crime-ridden war zones only get to see it on the "news" from the "bad" neighborhoods. Just look at those maps. CBS compares Chicago’s rubout rate to the wars against islamofascists in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is just bad reporting.
And about that "War on Some Drugs"
Next time you get the chance, ask your elected leaders:
With regard to the war on drugs, is the war succeeding? When could it be declared a success, the expense of waging it cease, and the tax-based infrastructure surrounding it be decreased or dismantled? If it can’t be declared a success, when might it be declared a failure and brought to a close? How do you respond to critics who say the war on some drugs is really just a federal-agent jobs program that provides price supports for the cartels? For more real questions the "news" media fails to ask, check out The Liberty Poll.
The Racial Component of Crime Shootings Is Real
Another news organization, overwhelmed with dead people from criminal violence, broke ranks with the standard "news" narative and identified the real problem (along with the failed war-on-some-drugs federal jobs program) -- blacks killing other blacks -- and a breakdown in the family unit leading children into role-model-free amoral behavior:
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20090920/NEWS01/909200364/10
Growing audacity among city gunmen
The News Journal (Wilmington, DE)
September 20, 2009
Byline: Adam Taylor & Ira Porter
Contact Ira Porter at 324 2890 or iporter@delawareonline.com.
Contact Adam Taylor at 324 2787 or ataylor@delawareonline.com.
These numbers were provided by the Delaware Criminal Justice Council, a government law enforcement planning and funding group. The council said it is seeing the same trends developing in 2009 that are revealed in the 2008 numbers, the most recent available.
140: Number of people shot — Sunday: Day of week when most shootings took place. 12 to 1 a.m.: Hour when most shootings took place.
THE VICTIMS
91%: Male
80%: Black
23.5%: Were 18 21 years old (the largest age group)
53%: Would not cooperate with police to find who shot them
78%: Have criminal histories
65%: Have been arrested at least twice on drug charges
37%: Have been arrested for felony weapons charges
17%: Qualify as "career criminals"
44%: Are suspected to be "actively involved" in drug trade
80%: Whose first arrest came as a juvenile
THE SUSPECTS
97%: Minority males
91%: Black males
48%: Were 18 21 years old (the largest age group)
92%: Have criminal histories
57%: Have been arrested at least twice on drug charges
81%: Have been arrested for weapons charges
43%: Qualify as "career criminals"
65%: Are suspected of being "actively involved" in drug trade
89%: Whose first arrest came as a juvenile
92%: Cases where victim and suspect were black
31%: Shooting cases cleared by the Wilmington Police Department
Use the link, read the story, get close to the truth, if you dare.
Viciously Anti-Gun-Rights L.A. Times Joins The Truth Squad
Homicide Blog since 2007 clearly shows who’s getting murdered. All 740 of them.
It’s not "gun violence", it's social violence for one tiny class of people.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126853039&ft=1&f=2
If you don’t want to visit the link and read the whole thing:
[snip]
"The truth about homicide," senior reporter Jill Leovy says, "is that it is black men in their 20s, in their 30s, in their 40s. The way we guide money and policy in this country, we do not care about those people. It’s not described as what’s central to our homicide problem, and I wanted people to see that. I wanted people to see those lives and to see that that’s our real homicide problem in America".
[snip]
"The money needs to go to black male argument violence," she continues. "Anything else -- you’re dealing with the margins of the problem, statistically, and it’s not right".
"Homicide is not a mass syndrome in America," she says. "It’s a concentrated group of people and that group of people is still horribly affected by homicide".
In 2007, L.A. County's murder rates were especially low. Even so, Leovy says, black men in their 20s were dying at rates of around 140 per 100,000 per year.
"As a middle-aged white lady, my death rate is probably 1 or 2 per 100,000 -- maximum," Leovy says. "These young men are dying at 140. They’re in a war zone, and the rest of us are living in a different country".
"The real homicide problem is not the numbers that everybody focuses on, it’s the disproportion".
Contact:
Alan Korwin
BLOOMFIELD PRESS
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