Personally I like guns

They make it so much easier to kill someone

And I own a gun

What needs to be done is to somehow reshape the culture of guns anf violence in the US today

No small task   and I freely admit I dont have a clue as to how we do that

I also believe the 2nd amendment guarantees the right to bear arms

I dont think tougher gun laws would do much good, even if we amended the constitution

We live in the most violent country of all the industialized nations, and I find that unacceptable

But even though my IQ hovers around 300, I think it will take folks smarter than me, to,come up with a solutiion

I forgot this   I  dont think backround checks, mandatory testing or requiring someone who carries, to have an expertise in guns before they are allowe to have one, are unreasonable requirements

Oh I forgot this too   I dont think the founding fathers would be cool with people having nuclear weapons

So the queation is, what kind of guns people can carry, and what level of compentence should someone possess to own a gun

I also believe the 2nd amendment guarantees the right to bear arms


It's not a "beliefe", it simply is.  However, the 2nd amendment also guarantees the gov't the right to regulate those arms.  

I dont think tougher gun laws would do much good, even if we amended the constitution.

If crazy guy's mother didnt' have those assault weapons, those kids would likely still be alive.   Don't assume that if made illegal, the average citizen, like that lady, will hit the black market to get them.  She'd likely setttle for ol' shootgun and a 357.  Don't think crazy guy couldn've gotten as many children with those.  

We live in the most violent country of all the industialized nations, and I find that unacceptable

But even though my IQ hovers around 300, I think it will take folks smarter than me, to,come up with a solutiion

Why we can start by putting these kill-a-whole-bunch-of-kids at once guns off the market where crazy guy's mom can't get them.   Since you recognize that this is the most militarized and violent nation on earth it's a practical first step.  

ru It's not a "beliefe"  It simply is

In your opinion and my opinion

But there are enough people who dont think it was the intention of the founding fathers to allow people to own guns outside of joining
 a militia

To say it simply is strikes me as being a little arogant

To say it simply is strikes me as being a little arogant ignorant.

S.P.S.

ru  To say it simply is strikes me as being a little arrogant ignorant

well if you think it is more ignorance than arrogance, you're being awfully hard on yourself

A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths

In part by forbidding almost all forms of firearm ownership, Japan has as few as two gun-related homicides a year.

Max Fisher  The Atlantic

I've heard it said that, if you take a walk around Waikiki, it's only a matter of time until someone hands you a flyer of scantily clad women clutching handguns, overlaid with English and maybe Japanese [text advertising] one of the many local shooting ranges. The city's largest, the Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club, advertises instructors fluent in Japanese, which is also the default language of its [website]. For years, this peculiar Hawaiian industry has [explicitly targeted Japanese tourists], drawing them away from [beaches and resorts] into shopping malls, to do things that are forbidden in their own country. 

Waikiki's Japanese-filled ranges are the sort of quirk you might find in any major tourist town, but they're also an intersection of two societies with wildly different approaches to guns and their role in society. Friday's [horrific shooting] at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater has been a reminder that America's gun control laws are [the loosest in the developed world] and its [rate of gun-related homicide is the highest]. Of the world's 23 "rich" countries, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is [almost 20 times] that of the other 22. With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America's ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second, with a rate about half of America's. 

But what about the country at the other end of the spectrum? What is the role of guns in Japan, the developed world's least firearm-filled nation and perhaps its strictest controller? In 2008, the U.S. had over [12 thousand] firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced [only 11], fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two, and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a [national scandal]. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally. 

Almost no one in Japan owns a gun. Most kinds are illegal, with onerous restrictions on buying and maintaining the few that are allowed. Even the country's infamous, mafia-like Yakuza [tend] to [forgo] guns; the [few exceptions] tend to become big national news stories.

Japanese tourists who fire off a few rounds at the Royal Hawaiian [Shooting Club] would be breaking [three] separate laws back in Japan -- one for holding a handgun, one for possessing unlicensed bullets, and another violation for firing them -- the first of which alone is punishable by one to ten years in jail. Handguns are forbidden absolutely. Small-caliber rifles have been illegal to buy, sell, or transfer since 1971. Anyone who owned a rifle before then is allowed to keep it, but their heirs are required to turn it over to the police once the owner dies. 

The only guns that Japanese citizens can legally buy and use are shotguns and air rifles, and it's not easy to do. The process is detailed in David Kopel's [landmark study] on Japanese gun control, published in the 1993 Asia Pacific Law Review, still cited as current. (Kopel, no left-wing loony, is a member of the National Rifle Association and once [wrote] in National Review that looser gun control laws could have stopped Adolf Hitler.) 

To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written [test], which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you'll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don't forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.

Even the most basic framework of Japan's approach to gun ownership is almost the polar opposite of America's. U.S. gun law begins with the second amendment's affirmation of the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" and narrows it down from there. Japanese law, however, starts with the [1958 act] stating that "No person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords," later adding a few exceptions. In other words, American law is designed to enshrine access to guns, while Japan starts with the premise of forbidding it. The history of that is complicated, but it's worth noting that U.S. gun law has its roots in resistance to British gun restrictions, whereas some academic literature links the Japanese law to the national campaign to forcibly disarm the samurai, which may partially explain why the 1958 mentions firearms and swords side-by-side.

Of course, Japan and the U.S. are separated by a number of cultural and historical difference much wider than their gun policies. Kopel explains that, for whatever reason, Japanese tend to be more tolerant of the broad search and seizure police powers necessary to enforce the ban. "Japanese, both criminals and ordinary citizens, are much more willing than their American counterparts to consent to searches and to answer questions from the police," he writes. But even the police did not carry firearms themselves until, in 1946, the American occupation authority ordered them to. Now, Japanese police receive more hours of training than their American counterparts, are forbidden from carrying off-duty, and invest hours in studying martial arts in part because they "are expected to use [firearms] in only the rarest of circumstances," according to Kopel.

The Japanese and American ways of thinking about crime, privacy, and police powers are so different -- and Japan is such a generally peaceful country -- that it's functionally impossible to fully isolate and compare the two gun control regiments. It's not much easier to balance the costs and benefits of Japan's unusual approach, which helps keep its murder rate at the [second-lowest in the world], though at the cost of restrictions that Kopel calls a "police state," a worrying suggestion that it hands the government too much power over its citizens. After all, the U.S. constitution's second amendment is intended in part to maintain "the security of a free State" by ensuring that the government doesn't have a monopoly on force. Though it's worth considering another police state here: Tunisia, which had the [lowest firearm ownership rate in the world] (one gun per thousand citizens, compared to America's 890) when its people toppled a brutal, 24-year dictatorship and sparked the Arab Spring.

Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States

Posted by [Ezra Klein] on December 14, 2012


WASHINGTON POST

When we [first collected] much of this data, it was after the Aurora, Colo. shootings, and the air was thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t talk about reforming our gun control laws.”

Let’s be clear: That is a form of politicization. When political actors construct a political argument that threatens political consequences if other political actors pursue a certain political outcome, that is, almost by definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s just a form of politicization favoring those who prefer the status quo to stricter gun control laws.

Since then, there have been more horrible, high-profile shootings. Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the [Kansas City Chiefs], took his girlfriend’s life and then his own. In Oregon, Jacob Tyler Roberts entered a mall holding a semi-automatic rifle and yelling “I am the shooter.” And, in Connecticut, at least [27 are dead] — including 20 children — after a man opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary [School].

• If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it. 

Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. “Too soon,” howl supporters of loose [gun laws]. But as others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late.

What follows here isn’t a policy agenda. It’s simply a set of facts — many of which complicate a search for easy answers — that should inform the discussion that we desperately need to have.

1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States. 

Mother Jones has [tracked and mapped] every shooting spree in the last three decades. “Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii,” they found. And in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally:

Chart

2. 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.

Time has the full list [here]. In second place is Finland, with two entries.

3. Lots of guns don’t necessarily mean lots of shootings, as you can see in Israel and Switzerland.*

As David Lamp [writes] at Cato, “In Israel and Switzerland, for example, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel ‘have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.’” 

*Correction: The info is out-of-date, if not completely wrong. Israel and Switzerland have tightened their gun laws substantially, and now pursue an entirely different approach than the United States. More details [here]. I apologize for the error.

4. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five have [happened] from 2007 onward.

That doesn’t include Friday’s shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The AP put the early [reported] death toll at 27, which would make it the second-deadliest mass shooting in US history.

5. America is an unusually violent country. But we’re not as violent as we used to be.

Kieran Healy, a sociologist at Duke University, made this [graph] of “deaths due to assault” in the United States and other developed countries. We are a clear outlier.

graph

As Healy writes, “The most striking features of the data are (1) how much more violent the U.S. is than other OECD countries (except possibly Estonia and Mexico, not shown here), and (2) the degree of change—and recently, decline—there has been in the U.S. time series considered by itself.”

6. The South is the most violent region in the United States.

In a subsequent [post], Healy drilled further into the numbers and looked at deaths due to assault in different regions of the country. Just as the United States is a clear outlier in the international context, the South is a clear outlier in the national context:

chart

7. Gun ownership in the United States is declining overall.

“For all the attention given to America’s culture of guns, ownership of firearms is at or near all-time lows,” [writes] political scientist Patrick Egan. The decline is most evident on the General Social Survey, though it also shows up on polling from Gallup, as you can see on this graph:

graph

The bottom line, Egan writes, is that “long-term trends suggest that we are in fact currently experiencing a waning culture of guns and violence in the United States. “

8. More guns tend to mean more homicide.

The Harvard Injury Control Research Center assessed the literature on guns and homicide and found that there’s substantial evidence that indicates more guns means more murders. This holds true whether you’re looking at different countries or different states. Citations [here].

9. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.

Last year, economist Richard Florida[ dove deep] into the correlations between gun deaths and other kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness were not correlated with more deaths from gun violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps, perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths. The disclaimer here is that correlation is not causation. But correlations can be suggestive:

map

“The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state,” explains Florida. “It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place – assault weapons’ bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements. Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).”

10. Gun control, in general, has not been politically popular.

Since 1990, Gallup has been asking Americans whether they think gun control laws should be stricter. The answer, increasingly, is that they don’t. “The percentage in favor of making the laws governing the sale of firearms ‘more strict’ fell from 78% in 1990 to 62% in 1995, and 51% in 2007,” [reports] Gallup. “In the most recent reading, Gallup in 2010 found 44% in favor of stricter laws. In fact, in 2009 and again last year, the slight majority said gun laws should either remain the same or be made less strict.”

11. But particular policies to control guns often are.

An August CNN/ORC poll asked respondents whether they favor or oppose a number of specific policies to restrict gun ownership. And when you drill down to that level, many policies, including banning the manufacture and possession of semi-automatic rifles, are popular.

12. Shootings don’t tend to substantially affect views on gun control.

That, at least, is what the [Pew Research Center] found:

graph 

Now is the time for meaningful gun control

 Washington Post

By [E.J. Dionne Jr.], []Published: December 16

We should mourn, but we should be angry.

The horror in [Newtown, Conn.], should shake us out of the cowardice, the fear, the evasion and the opportunism that prevents our political system from acting to curb gun violence.

How often must we note that no other developed country has such massacres on a regular basis because no other comparable nation allows such easy access to guns? And on no subject other than ungodly episodes involving guns are those who respond logically by demanding solutions accused of “politicizing tragedy.”

It is time to insist that such craven propaganda will no longer be taken seriously. If Congress does not act this time, we can deem it as totally bought and paid for by the representatives of gun manufacturers, gun [dealers] and their very well-compensated apologists. A former high Obama administration official once made this comment to me: “If progressives are so worked up about how Washington is controlled by the banks and Wall Street, why aren’t they just as worked up by the power of the gun lobby?” It is a good question.

There was a [different quality] to [President Obama’s response] to this mass shooting, both initially and during his Sunday pilgrimage to offer comfort to the families of victims. I think I know why. It is not just that 20 young children were killed, although that would be enough.

For some months now, there have been rumblings from the administration that Obama has been unhappy with his own policy passivity in responding to the [earlier mass shootings] and was prepared in his second term to propose tough steps to deal with our national madness on firearms.

He spoke in Newtown in solidarity with the suffering, but pointed toward action. No, he said, we are not “doing enough to keep our children, all our children, safe.” He added: “We will have to change.”

And his initial statement Friday pointed to his exasperation. “We have been through this too many times,” he said, reciting our national litany of unspeakable events, and insisting that we will “have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

“[Regardless of the politics].” That is what it will take. This phrase comes easily to a president who just fought his last election, but he and the rest of us must change the politics of guns for those who will face the voters again. We cannot just be sad. We must be angry. We cannot just shake our heads. We must wield our votes and declare that curbing gun violence is not one issue among many, but a paramount concern for our country.

And we will have to avoid the paralysis induced by those who cast every mass shooting as the work of one deranged individual and never ever the result of flawed policies. We must beware of those who invoke complexity not to further understanding but to encourage passivity and resignation.

Yes, every social problem and every act of violence have complicated roots. But we already know that it is [far too easy to obtain guns] in the United States and far too difficult to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them. And we already know that weapons are available that should not even be sold.

What, minimally, might “meaningful action” look like? We should [begin] with: bans on high-capacity magazines and [assault weapons]; requiring [background checks] for all gun purchases; stricter laws to make sure that gun owners follow safety procedures; new steps to make it easier to trace guns used in crimes; and vastly ramped-up data collection and research on what works to prevent gun violence, both of which are regularly blocked by the gun lobby.

After mass shootings, it’s always said we must improve our mental-health system and the treatment of those who may be prone to violence. Of course we should. But this noble sentiment is too often part of a strategy to evade any action on guns themselves.

Not this time. Americans are not the only people in the world who confront mental-health problems. We are the only country that regularly experiences horrors of this sort. The difference, as the writer Garry Wills has said, is that the United States treats the gun as a secular god, immune to rational analysis and human intervention.

We must depose the false deity. We must act now to curb gun violence, or we never will.

[Gun Control After Newtown]

Jeffrey D. Sachs

NEW YORK – The brutal murder of 20 children and seven adults in Newtown, Connecticut, shakes us to the core as individuals and requires a response as citizens. The United States seems to reel from one mass gun killing to another – roughly one a month this year alone. Easy access to guns in the US leads to horrific murder rates relative to other highly educated and wealthy societies. America needs to find a better way.

Other countries have done so. Between the mid-1970’s and the mid-1990’s, Australia had several mass shootings. After a particularly horrible massacre in 1996, a new prime minister, John Howard, declared that enough was enough. He instituted a severe crackdown on gun ownership, and forced would-be gun owners to submit to a rigorous [application] process, and to document why they would need a gun.

Conditions for gun ownership in Australia are now very strict, and the [registration] and approval process can take a year or more. Howard’s government also implemented a rigorous “buyback” policy, to enable the government to purchase guns already owned by the public.

The policy worked. While violent crime has not ended in Australia, murders are down, and, even more dramatically, there has not been a single mass shooting since 1996 in which three or more people died (the definition used in many studies of mass shootings). Before the crackdown, there had been 13 such massacres in 18 years.

Yet the US still refuses to act, even after this year’s string of shocking incidents: the massacre in a movie theatre in Colorado, an attack on a Sikh community in Milwaukee, another on a shopping mall in Oregon, and many more before the ruthless slaughter of first graders and school staff in Newtown. The gun lobby in the US remains powerful, and politicians are afraid to counter it. Given the shooting of then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, perhaps they even fear that they, too, might be targeted.

There can be little doubt that some societies are more steeped in violence than others, even controlling for obvious factors like [income] levels and education. The US homicide rate is roughly four times that of comparable societies in Western Europe, and Latin America’s homicide rates are even higher than in the US (and dramatically higher than Asian countries at roughly the same income level). What accounts for staggeringly high rates in the US and Latin America?

American violence is rooted in history. The US and Latin American countries are all “conquest” societies, in which Europeans ruled over multi-racial societies. In many of these countries, including the US, the European conquerors and their descendants nearly wiped out the indigenous populations, partly through disease, but also through war, starvation, death marches, and forced labor.

In the US and many Latin American countries, slaveholding fueled mass violence as well. The slaves – and generations of their descendants – were routinely murdered.

The US also developed a particular populist belief that gun ownership constitutes a vital protection against government tyranny. The US was born in a citizens’ revolt against British imperial power. The right of citizens to organize militias to fight government tyranny was therefore a founding idea of the new country, enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which declares that, because a country needs a well-regulated militia, the people have the right to bear arms.

Since citizens’ militias are anachronistic, gun owners now use the second amendment merely to defend individual gun ownership, as if that somehow offers protection against tyranny. A reckless, right-wing Supreme Court has agreed with them. As a result, gun ownership has become perversely linked to freedom in the vast gun-owning American sub-culture.

But, instead of protection of freedom, Americans nowadays are getting massive bloodshed and fear. The claim that gun ownership ensures freedom is especially absurd, given that most of the world’s vibrant democracies have long since cracked down on private gun ownership. No tyrant has risen in Australia since Howard’s gun-control reforms.

Simply put, freedom in the twenty-first century does not depend on unregulated gun ownership. Indeed, America’s gun culture is a threat to freedom, after the murder of a president, senator, and other public leaders, and countless assassination attempts against public officials over recent decades.

Yet US gun culture remains as pervasive as it is unrecorded. America reels from one shooting disaster to the next, and on nearly every occasion, politicians dutifully declare their continued devotion to unregulated gun ownership. Indeed, no one even knows how many guns Americans hold. The number is estimated to be around [270 million], or almost one per person on average. According to one recent poll, [47% of households have a gun at home].

The shooting in Newtown was not only especially horrific and heartbreaking, but is also part of an increasingly common pattern – a specific kind of murder-suicide that has been carefully studied by psychologists and psychiatrists. Loners, often with paranoid tendencies, commit these heinous acts as part of their own suicide. They use carefully planned and staged mass murders of innocents in order to take revenge on society and to glorify themselves as they take their own lives.

The perpetrators are not hardened criminals; many have no previous criminal record. They are pathetic, deranged, and often have struggled with mental instability for much of their lives. They need help – and society needs to keep guns out of their reach.

America has now suffered around 30 shooting massacres over the past 30 years, including this year’s deadly dozen; each is a gut-wrenching tragedy for many families. And yet, each time, gun owners scream that freedom will be eliminated if they are unable to buy assault weapons and 100-round clips.

The bloodbath in Newtown is the time to stop feeding this gun frenzy. Australia and other countries provide models of how to do it: regulate and limit gun ownership to approved uses. America’s real freedoms depend on sane public policy.

Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States

Posted by [Ezra Klein] on December 14, 2012
------------------

great stuff, may I add a no. 13?

13. No mass shooting has ever been stopped by an armed civilian.

Thank You. 

13. No mass shooting has ever been stopped by an armed civilian.

Can you answer how many were "detered" or DIDNT HAPPEN because of the fear of resistance by an armed portector.

Should your theory be so solid....can I assume you advocate that we should simply eliminate ALL deterrent to evil such as local and state police, national guard, and all military...right?

I wonder how many "innocent robberies" in South Central have NOT Happened because the local thugs known the storekeeper is packing severe heat?

Dear Good and Bad US Citizenery,

Guns of all types have proven to be harmful if not wielded responsibly. Therefore, we have decided will simply eliminate guns from our society in order to be more passive in this kind world in which we now live. 

To that end, we will end all future sales of firearms and now respectfully ask that you PLEASE turn in all 300,000,000 million of your current firearms so we, as a society, can be more better nicer.

Thanks in advance,

POLLY ANNA 

PS. In the future, If you by chance notice any guns or ammo coming in with all the illegal weed, coke, heroin and pills.... please report the guns to your local authorities so they may take appropriate action

Dear Kind Citizens,

We should now also move to ban any and all media/communications that portray, intimate or reference any Violent Acts or Violence. Specfically the ban will include the following as they portray and/or condone such evil based behavior :

1. Video Games

2. Movies

3. Internet Content

4. TV Shows

5. Books

Thanks in advance,

 Big B Rother

 

Dear Kind Citizens,

We should now also move to ban any and all media/communications that portray, intimate or reference any Violent Acts or Violence. Specfically the ban will include the following as they portray and/or condone such evil based behavior :

1. Video Games

2. Movies

3. Internet Content

4. TV Shows

5. Books

Thanks in advance,

 Big B Rother

DEAR BIG,

YOU FORGOT ONE.

SINCERELY YOURS FOREVER, 

THE THOUGHT POLICE

The Thought Police (thinkpol in [Newspeak]) are the [secret police] of [Oceania] in [George Orwell]'s [dystopian] novel [Nineteen Eighty-Four].

It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish [thoughtcrime] and thought-criminals. They use [psychology] and omnipresent [surveillance] (such as [telescreens]) to monitor, search, find and arrest members of society who could potentially challenge authority and status quo, even only by thought, hence the name Thought Police.<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"> [[1]]</sup>  They use terror and torture to achieve their ends.

It also had much to do with Orwell's own "power of facing unpleasant facts," as he called it, and his willingness to criticize prevailing ideas which brought him into conflict with others and their "smelly little orthodoxies."<sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"> [[2]]</sup>

 

The following stream of honest consciousness has been brought to your free of charge by your owner and benevolent mind interloper. 

Now go take on the day!

6. The South is the most violent region in the United States.

In a subsequent [post], Healy drilled further into the numbers and looked at deaths due to assault in different regions of the country. Just as the United States is a clear outlier in the international context, the South is a clear outlier in the national context...

Why??... 

Poverty.

Poverty....

...so where is the debate, discussion and answers for addressing the poverty issue in the South...

Poverty....

...so where is the debate, discussion and answers for addressing the poverty issue in the South...

From who?  I mean, what do you think I've been talking about all this time, in regards to ending the drug war, bettering inner-city education, reforming our justice system, etc, etc?  Maybe you mean politicians - in which case I'd readily agree.

There is one kind of odd reason that is often cited for the South having higher levels of violence, but it might actually have something to do with it - HEAT.

It is hotter in the south year round, but it is especially interesting that the murder rates is not only higher in the South, but especially higher in the summer time.  This could be a situation where there is correlation, but not causation - but Idk, tempers are more likely to flare when people are hot.  Being hot can certainly piss me off, lol.

If I lived in an overheated, overcrowded urban jungle surrounded by ignorant ****s, Id be ready to pop a cap myself.

There is one kind of odd reason that is often cited for the South having higher levels of violence, but it might actually have something to do with it - HEAT....

...ok, the heat may make us more irritable and thus perhaps  put some people more on edge, but to ignore or dismiss the southern racial tension history that is obviously still very real is a little crazy...the entire deep south is strongly RED, politically, not because its warm in the south...

There is one kind of odd reason that is often cited for the South having higher levels of violence, but it might actually have something to do with it - HEAT....

...ok, the heat may make us more irritable and thus perhaps  put some people more on edge, but to ignore or dismiss the southern racial tension history that is obviously still very real is a little crazy...the entire deep south is strongly RED, politically, not because its warm in the south...

1) I said the heat might have something to do with it - not that it is the only contributing factor.  I didn't "ignore or dismiss" anything.

2) Yet.

3) Imo, racial tension has little to do with the gun violence in the south.  If it were a big deal, there would be more white on black, and black on white, crime - where really, most murders are intra-race.  According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics:

From 1976 to 2005 --

• 86% of white victims were killed by whites
• 94% of black victims were killed by blacks

[http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/ho
micide/race.cfm]  (since the link won't work, it is the Bureau of Justice Statistics page on Homicide trends in the US, by race.

4) Politics have nothing to do with murder rates...

 Imo, racial tension has little to do with the gun violence in the south.  If it were a big deal, there would be more white on black, and black on white, crime - where really, most murders are intra-race.  According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics:

 Politics have nothing to do with murder rates...

totally disagree...thats looking at it in a narrowed,  small picture view, but big picture it has quite a bit to do with it, how could it not...historical race relations, racial tensions, and politics have quite a bit to do with how blacks and whites behave and treat each other, and themselves today, the conditions they live under, the disparity in quality of life,  the violent culture, and pretty much all conditions in the south....the conditions are rooted in past racial tensions, economics, power, control and politics...the conditions in the south, including a violent gun culture, didn't just start when black folks got guns, it  doesn't just happen by chance, its the outside economic, educational, historically segregated, racial issues, and other forces that lead people to act in such a violent way to get what they want or need to survive....to believe that politics,  past racial history, current racial history, and economic conditions, dictated largely by those in power there have no bearing on the behavior of poorer, less educated, and rather powerless segment of society that live there is ridiculous...and because most murders are black on black or white on white, that doesn't mean the conditions that lead to the murders were'nt influenced in some way by the local politics, and racial relations that have prevailed for quite some time in that part of the country...is it a direct cause and effect, perhaps not, but it has a relationship without a doubt...

There is one kind of odd reason that is often cited for the South having higher levels of violence, but it might actually have something to do with it - HEAT.

I thought about posting exactly that before changing it to poverty.

There is one kind of odd reason that is often cited for the South having higher levels of violence, but it might actually have something to do with it - HEAT.

I thought about posting exactly that before changing it to poverty....

...before all of the weathermen continue to chime in on the heat, lets go back to the bigger issues, POVERTY, EDUCATION, INCOME, JOBS, et....and in a region of this country where racial differences are historicaly rooted in hatred, and where until recent decades, Whites controlled all of the power, all of the decision making, and many, if not most non-whites had very little to show for it, except for huge disadvantages in housing,  jobs, education, wealth, healthcare,etc.. then wouldn't you exepct those groups that are locked out of the system to compete fairly, and lacking the power to fight those in power, they then turn on each other in their own communities, as they fight for survival over the limited resources available...so even if it isn't a direct racial, black/white violence issue per se, the conditions that spark the violence, the conflicts, the anger and desperation, is rooted in black/white relations,  racist behaviors, and policies, that have defined so many of the  disparities between whites and blacks in the south for many years...

...before all of the weathermen continue to chime in on the heat

Whether or not you believe it to be an acceptable influence on the homicide rate in the South, it is constantly cited by those CJ scholars who publish on the matter, as, at least, a factor worthy of consideration. 

If you don't believe me, just google "influence of heat on homicide rates," and you will have link after link to scholarly publications on the matter.  That it's impact cannot truly be measured is the primary issue.

and in a region of this country where racial differences are historicaly rooted in hatred, and where until recent decades, Whites controlled all of the power, all of the decision making, and many, if not most non-whites had very little to show for it, except for huge disadvantages in housing,  jobs, education, wealth, healthcare,etc.. then wouldn't you exepct those groups that are locked out of the system to compete fairly, and lacking the power to fight those in power, they then turn on each other in their own communities, as they fight for survival over the limited resources available...so even if it isn't a direct racial, black/white violence issue per se, the conditions that spark the violence, the conflicts, the anger and desperation, is rooted in black/white relations,  racist behaviors, and policies, that have defined so many of the  disparities between whites and blacks in the south for many years...

So how do you explain that BJS statistic that 94% of black people are killed by other black people, and 86% of white people are killed by other white people?

 

There is one kind of odd reason that is often cited for the South having higher levels of violence, but it might actually have something to do with it - HEAT.

nathan, people getting irritable is a good reason to have less guns.  Unless you want climate control.