Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many U.S. Cities

originally posted by: TonyS
You don't have MS-13 in Italy.

No, they invented the Mafia - much scarier fellows than drugged-up wannabees.

originally posted by: IShotMyLastMuse
maybe not giving out guns like candy could help lower those numbers.
but i am sure we can find a scapegoat to not have the conversation america needs to have.
So let's blame miley cyrus

Guns are already highly illegal in these cities. Probably 99% of the guns used are stolen / illegal obtained. In fact, in my town of Chicago, there isn't a single gun store. To assert guns are being handed out like candy shows your ignorance of the subject. The vast majority of these murders are on thug shooting another thug with illegal firearms.

originally posted by: xuenchen

Well you can certainly bring those statistics into the topic if you want to.

Stats have yet to be released for 2015 nationally, but some cities have reported individually. I'm not digging that deep. Just noting that only showing one side is an obvious tell of propaganda. I'm sure you've seen this clearly when researching things that prove your biases.

Here's some bits from the bbc on the supposed rise.

Violent crime is not going up everywhere. Philadelphia has seen a 41% decrease in murders since 2007.
Short-term spikes are statistically unreliable, especially if they come after a long-term decline, and could just be a blip, said Dr James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.
"It's a ridiculous silly game of focusing too much on too little, trying to ascribe it to something like the impact of [events in] Ferguson," said Mr Fox. "None of these statistics are reliable."
A wider window of statistics would be much more reliable than a handful of figures representing January to May of this year, he said.
That flattened feeling police officers are having in Baltimore? It will pass, Dr Fox said.
"I don't want to minimise the tragedy of so many dying... but the sky is not falling," he said.

Anthony Reuben, head of statistics, BBC News:
Some of the rises in violent crime so far this year are indeed striking, but I understand there have been similarly impressive falls in other cities.
It is usually a mistake to declare a trend based on a few months of figures for a handful of cities. It is also difficult to blame this selection of figures on a nationwide problem with US policing, or anything else for that matter.
I'm sure the relevant police departments are looking at these figures very carefully, but we will need considerably more data over a longer period to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Link

Not sure why people are so easily taken in by this.

originally posted by: Kryties

originally posted by: TonyS
You don't have MS-13 in Italy.

No, they invented the Mafia - much scarier fellows than drugged-up wannabees.

I'm not an expert on the subject, but I'm not sure if I agree with that. Although the mafia does/did horrific things, it's my understanding that for the most part, they only killed eachother. (Of course, I'm sure they would shake down innocent business owners for "protection.")

a reply to: xuenchen

The simplest answer is that cops have backed off harassing known thugs due to all the media coverage of the BLM minstrels. Cops are afraid to go in and bust heads on the corner making it easier for the thugs to commit crimes. It also could just be a statistical anomaly as well. It isn't like murders are all that predictable.

a reply to: Kryties

I'm glad we can agree that it did in fact make you look bad.

Personally I'm not against gun control, but it's the way you present it that makes more of a difference than what you actually do. The more you try to come at people with this supremecist attitude the less people are inclined to listen to what you have to say. You put people on the defensive right away, and for what?

Next time come with links for your "facts"

Try to understand people instead of throwing up a wall between us and then attempting to yell at it. If you can work on that then I'll work on not immediately dismissing people who use manipulative language.

a reply to: xuenchen

The quoted analysis is bunk. The police shot more people in February in my town than they did all year last year- use of force went up as of new years as if a nation wide policy had gone into effect, and police casualties are down as a result. They aren't scared.

The article even mentions this trend slightly predates the police outrages and that it seems to be including an uptick in unpredictable violence such as over cohabitation and women etc.

I think we're looking at a syndrome of stuff including some subtle factors. One of my favorite books, Freakonomics, tied the leveling off of violence in the mid 90s to Roe V Wade- fewer kids growing up the hard way, 18 years later the number of desperate 18 year olds stops growing at the same rate.

1. We've been at war for 15 years. That means among the poor we're getting an infusion of 15-20 year olds whose fathers disappeared for a few years when they were little, and we've got tens if not hundreds of thousands of post traumatic middle aged men out there now too. Now the army is pushing people out.

2. The economy has been crap for 7 years- we've got 18 year olds coming into society who've known since freshman year they were gonna be either bums criminals or soldiers because that's what they've seen happen to older kids year after year- they don't know anyone who went to college and became a computer programmer.

3. People are hearing what others think of them more- thanks to Facebook- and they think each other should be shot. Kids want cops shot, old republicans want blacks shot and maybe the homeless too. Everyone has beef with everyone that they never speak on- just read and stew about.

4. Heroin is back on the street. Not just oxy- straight up, no lying to yourself about what it is, find a vein and hate yourself HEROIN. At least where I'm from that used to be almost an urban legend- sure it is in prisons but good luck finding a living unincarcerated old time junkie to show you the ropes- it was Rx or nothing. That's not true anymore.

If this was a war we'd see shifting tactics, localized battles, etc. Instead we see a general increase in tempo. Everyone is more easily triggered everywhere.

originally posted by: Kryties

originally posted by: IShotMyLastMuse
maybe not giving out guns like candy could help lower those numbers.
but i am sure we can find a scapegoat to not have the conversation america needs to have.
So let's blame miley cyrus

I completely agree, but as I have learned from my own past threads you are about to get a tsunami of ignorance thrown at you by people who can't stand the thought of not being able to kill other living things with a penis extension.

I'm not anti-guns, in fact I'm in the process of applying for my own shooters license in my country - a country (Australia) who incidentally has seen murder rates and suicides plummet since we introduced restrictions on gun ownership a few decades ago - oh and not a single mass murder since then either. So yeah, i'm not anti guns - but I do agree with and support having gun restrictions.

A tsunami of ignorance would be stating that these murder rates rising have anything at all to do with guns other than that being what has been used in some of them.....

If someone is going to bring guns into this debate then maybe that poster should also bring the stats showing that the murder rate with guns went up as well.....

The story states:

In Milwaukee, most of the victims and the suspects in their killings are black men under 30, police data shows, who come from neighborhoods where foreclosures, joblessness and poverty are also high. Most involve guns and people — both victims and suspects — who have been arrested before. The most common motive in the slayings was not robbery or gang rivalry but an argument, according to the data.

But yeah.....has to be because GUNS.....

originally posted by: eluryh22
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I'm not sure if I agree with that. Although the mafia does/did horrific things, it's my understanding that for the most part, they only killed eachother. (Of course, I'm sure they would shake down innocent business owners for "protection.")

Uh, no. You should red up on Toto Riina:

Whereas his predecessors had kept a low profile that caused some in law enforcement to question the very existence of the Mafia, Riina ordered the murders of judges, policemen and prosecutors in an attempt to terrify the authorities.

...

On 23 May 1992, Falcone, his wife and three police officers died in the blast of a huge improvised explosive device on a highway outside of Palermo. Two months later, Borsellino was killed along with five police officers in the entrance to his mother's apartment block by a car bomb. Both attacks were ordered by Riina. Ignazio Salvo, who had advised Riina against killing Falcone, was himself murdered on 17 September. Source

originally posted by: Bennyzilla
a reply to: Kryties

I'm glad we can agree that it did in fact make you look bad.

We agree on nothing, nice try.

Personally I'm not against gun control, but it's the way you present it that makes more of a difference than what you actually do. The more you try to come at people with this supremecist attitude the less people are inclined to listen to what you have to say. You put people on the defensive right away, and for what?

Sorry, but it shouldn't matter what my own personal thoughts on the subject are, no matter how much you try to make it important, as long as the main subject of the post contains the indisputable facts. You are cherry-picking an insignificant part from that post and blowing it all out of proportion to suit your own "agenda".

Next time come with links for your "facts"

You know this thing called "Google" right? I'm sure you know how to use it, so put those skills into practice, open up a new TAB in your browser and type in words to the effect of "Australian gun crime lower since ban" or something similar. The facts are plastered all over the internet for all to see, I'm really not sure how you could have missed them in your daily internet travels - unless, of course, you were willfully blocking out facts that disagree with your world view.

Try to understand people instead of throwing up a wall between us and then attempting to yell at it. If you can work on that then I'll work on not immediately dismissing people who use manipulative language.

Says the person who "manipulated" my post to cherry pick a small part that suited their agenda.

originally posted by: DEANORULES24
a reply to: IShotMyLastMuse

It's not GUNS !!
It's DRUGS, CRACK , PIlls ,Heroin !!

It is about guns and the fact that people either don't have them and get murdered or they do have them and defend themselves.

What percentage of this group is unarmed victims and what is failed criminals cashing in their hand?

If these numbers contain no criminals then we need to find the number of criminals dispatched in the same period.

a reply to: OrphanApology

Try reading the NY Times article. I did. The primary reasons for this rise in murder rates are stated to be:
1) Cultural; its become accepted in these "communities" to answer the smallest slight by killing the person who made it and that extends to slights made over social media.
2) The "Ferguson" effect: the cops simply aren't interdicting to the point they used to; they're adopting the "clean up crew" approach. If there's a report of a shooting at the intersection of "Elm" and "Blight", they wait 20 minutes to respond so the shooting's over with and they won't be caught in the cross fire.
3) Revolving door criminal justice system: as one cop is quoted in the article, "Its the same people over and over and over".
4) Its "poverty"; face it, so many of the "cities" quoted are old Industrial Age centers of manufacturing and shipping. The Industrial age is over; the jobs are gone and these people are trapped in these cities without any prospects of improving their lives. The economy has left them behind. Thus they live lives, abandoned and full of nothing but despair.

I don't think the US can "abort" its way out of this problem because unless they've changed the rules, its probably still the case that the government passes out benefits on the basis of number of mouths to feed.

a reply to: The Vagabond

Sounds like the big government failures are bigger than I thought.

a reply to: eluryh22
it's off topic i know. but specifically i live in sicily. when i was young i do remember not seeing certain people anymore, but now they moved mainly into construction, buying land, building 30 identical little houses to rent out to foreigners, that kind of stuff.
and politics of course

originally posted by: Kryties

originally posted by: TonyS
You don't have MS-13 in Italy.

No, they invented the Mafia - much scarier fellows than drugged-up wannabees.

If you really believe that.....I'd strongly suggest you stay in Italy. I know.......I used to live in Italy.

a reply to: xuenchen

I'm sure almost any ideology could put it into a box like that, but that does miss some important aspects of the problem any angle you come at it from.

Shrinking the government in and of itself doesn't alleviate the desperation of the poor, it dumps even more trauma cases into the streets, it enflames political anger...

I think the most open way to say it is that people feel as if they are in competition rather than united. They are more likely to take each other as a foe than a friend.

It doesn't have to be government, but I would suggest that there does need to be a unifying survival concern that makes us more good to one another alive than dead.

a reply to: Kryties

My language has all been very clear not manipulative. The language you use DOES matter if your intended goal is to get people to read and really comprehend what you have to say. It's clear that's not your interest. You want to stand on a soapbox and say your point, and then put your fingers in your ears when people respond.

It's not showing facts to tell me to "Google it", Mr.Jones

I've attempted to bridge the gap by letting you know we are on the same side here, but that your methods are ineffective and more or less detrimental to your end goal. That is unless your end goal was just run into a room, take a stab at gun supporters, and then run out.

Poor form indeed

originally posted by: TonyS

If you really believe that.....I'd strongly suggest you stay in Italy. I know.......I used to live in Italy.

Considering that I live in Australia (as is clearly mentioned in my first post), and have never been to Italy in my life, methinks "staying in Italy" could be a bit difficult for me.

a reply to: TonyS

All of those are subjective reasons why it "may" be happening. Not proven.

As I stated, I provided some extra stabs in the dark, because until long term data comes out that's all any of it is. The NY times posted subjected "opinions" not actual likely reasons based on any available data.

In terms of "aborting" your way out of violence, regardless of how you feel about the subject there is a correlation between abortion access and crime rates.

So...

1. Data?
2. That's essentially what I just wrote, not sure of the point of posting it. This has been a long practice of police when you live in bad neighborhoods. It's nothing new.
3. Revolving door criminal justice system usually involves non-violent offenders such as drugs and other such nonsense. Still doesn't explain fairly high spikes in very violent crimes.
4. And crime rates have still been decreasing in these areas over the years with the exception of a correlation between drug infusion and violent crime. So what is happening in these communities that is different than the last 20 or so years?

-Drugs were already a problem
-Police brutality has always been a problem
-Police not helping innocent people who just happen to exist in certain areas has always been a problem

To me the only change that I see that has been happening over recent years that wasn't already there before is change in abortion laws and contraception access(family planning clinics are becoming almost non-existent) and the economy(the economy was bad but again those kids are "coming of age").



So basically these kids are coming of age with no job prospects, no useful police in area, unwanted children to be responsible for, lots of drugs, gang violence, and enough anger to rival the old testament god.

Whole lotta trouble

All of the above is still stabs in the dark because we do not have long term data.

Anyone's conjecture is as good as anyone else's.

originally posted by: Kryties

originally posted by: TonyS

If you really believe that.....I'd strongly suggest you stay in Italy. I know.......I used to live in Italy.

Considering that I live in Australia (as is clearly mentioned in my first post), and have never been to Italy in my life, methinks "staying in Italy" could be a bit difficult for me.

Ah my bad. Got confused.
But being in Australia certainly does make you an expert on MS-13.