Gun Crime
Americans believe that crime is increasing, out of control. People in the middle of the country believe that the coastal cities are literally on fire, with looting and rioting and robbing and raping going on everywhere you look. They're afraid to come here. Every night the news goes on and on about escalating crime, and people believe it.
But the odd fact is that crime has been declining, even in the cities, for the past couple of decades. The country is safer than it ever was. Of course we can blame the media for this misinformation, and in particular we can blame their habit of going to the police for their facts. Police spokesmen have their own point of view, they want funding for the department and they want job security for officers and you can't blame them for that. But the result is not necessarily an objectively accurate narrative assessment of crime in the US, you might say.
On the other hand, one kind of crime is increasing. If this category gets recognized at all, it is typically called "violent crime." It includes homicides and felony assaults. Like, after a guy shot up the Van Ness neighborhood last week, just across the line from our little county, the Washington Post had this information in their news story:
[D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III] noted that on Friday and Saturday, police responded to a total of 10 shooting incidents with 15 victims, including a shooting of a man in a wheelchair and the shootings of three people in Brightwood Park. Both attacks occurred as police were in the midst of tracking down the sniper, evacuating buildings and securing the area around Van Ness.Also over that 48-hour period, a construction worker directing traffic was shot by a person on a ride-share bicycle who was upset with delays, and a man was fatally shot and stabbed during an argument at a birthday party. On Monday, as the mayor’s briefing was wrapping up, a person was fatally shot in Northeast Washington.
Police said they have seized 969 illegal guns in the District this year, a 50 percent increase from this point in 2021.
School was in sniper’s ‘crosshairs,’ but link is unclear, D.C. chief says
That's a lot of violent crime. But let's give it a more accurate name: gun crime. These are all incidents where someone shot someone with a gun. These deadly crimes might have been fistfights or shouting matches, except somebody had a gun.
Gun control has become one of those things that politicians can hardly talk about, because the rightwing noise machine will drown them out. Remember, "Obama's gonna take our guns away?" Whatever happened with that? They hated him because he was going to take their guns away, which he never mentioned and never tried to do. He should have, but the issue is simply too controversial to touch, even for a skilled negotiator like President Obama.
If you try to peel away the layers, you conclude that the problem is too complicated to solve. And yet, the Unites States is the only country on the planet that has 1.this kind of belief that guns are sacrosanct, and 2.this kind of murder rate. The problem is not complicated; everybody else has figured it out. Somebody just has to do something.
New York's subways had a mass shooter a couple of weeks ago, guy shot ten people and a bunch more were injured in the crowd scene. Good guys with guns did not prevent the crime, or interrupt it. The subway system is swarming with cops -- last January the mayor announced a plan to have uniformed police on every platform in the whole system. There were cops all over the place when the shooter caused havoc and then got off the train, exited the station, and wandered around the city until he phoned in his own location for them to come arrest him. Police did not stop him or catch him, even though the NYPD's budget is more than ten billion dollars.
In other words, you cannot solve the gun problem by increasing the number of armed policemen. That sort of escalation does not work for one simple reason, which is that the "bad guy with a gun" always has the advantage of surprise. You could have one cop for every citizen, trailing them around, watching their every move, and still a citizen could grab his gun and shoot somebody before the cop could respond. Sorry, but that's the truth. Constant police surveillance is not the solution. Also, I don't know why anybody would even want to live like that.
The solution is to do what every other civilized country does: control access to guns. Yep, take 'em away. Melt 'em down. Use the metal in the supply chain. Nobody needs an AR-15 in their house. Nobody needs magazine clips with unlimited capacity. People with arrest records for violent crimes can do enough damage with their fists, they don't need the power of bullets when they lose their self-control. There ought to be some training for gun owners, some screening, periodic testing. Other countries do it, we can do it.
People around the world look at American gun violence and say, "That is crazy." And any reasonable person has to agree, this is crazy. Guns do not make anyone safer, they only make everyone less safe. And yet there is no serious movement to do anything about the problem.
It's as if there were a religious taboo on this subject, we are not culturally permitted to mention it. The Second Amendment is, for one thing, not grammatically clear, and for another, it was written during a time when "arms" were primitive compared to what Joe Shmoe can get now. Guns have a place, hunting is a worthwhile thing to do, and a pistol might make you feel safer in your house. But ... back to the guy last week at Van Ness, from the same Post piece:
Raymond Spencer had six firearms in the apartment on Van Ness Street, including three fully automatic rifles, the chief said at a news conference Monday. He said police found thousands more rounds of ammunition inside another residence in Fairfax County, Va., and parts to assemble three additional firearms.Now come on, you know this is crazy. It's time for reasonable people to speak common sense about this topic and solve this uniquely American problem.