Under the gun: Murder in Chicago and Toronto

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Lets just put it like this. Around the time I was 16 years old and got my car I decided that we'd go to the weed spot in Detroit (pretty much every block but there was a particular spot that my friends knew about). They were black and went down there many times.

So we get off the freeway and drive a couple miles. We turn into the subdivision (hood). It was summer.

The houses are run down and a lot of activity is going on. People are on their porches, walking pit bulls, cars going much faster than the recommended speed limit, sound systems blaring.

There is a run down school in the neighborhood. There are 3 guys standing by one of the side doors. They have 40oz. with paper lunch bags around them. They are shooting dice on the cement by the side door with dollars all over the floor.

It was a scene straight out of the movies and I was in a complete culture shock.

And? How does that affect the crime rate? How would gun laws change anything you describe?

If Michigan, including Detroit, simply made it legal for ANYone to carry a concealed handgun, as we have always been allowed to do in Vermont, what would happen? Why?

If the result of having the same gun laws was different in Michigan than in Vermont, then the difference cannot be guns.

What is it?

[웃 910]

And? How does that affect the crime rate? How would gun laws change anything you describe?

If Michigan, including Detroit, simply made it legal for ANYone to carry a concealed handgun, as we have always been allowed to do in Vermont, what would happen? Why?

If the result of having the same gun laws was different in Michigan than in Vermont, then the difference cannot be guns.

What is it?

On a positive note I'm sure 10s of thousands (maybe more) criminals (maybe not best word) would not head to prison each year for having a gun....But it would be an even more dangerous place in my opinion. It is already a very lawless city. The criminals that are sitting in prison right now for weapons charges would all be back in the hood and not in prison.

Murders would probably go up, along with rapes and robberies.

The difference is in the culture. Not everyone in Detroit is black so I'm not saying this as a racist thing.

It's like saying let's give suicide bombs to the suicidal bombers and see what happens.

If you give suicide bombs to people in Vermont nothing will happen. But it would be a terrible idea to drop suicide bombs off to certain groups of people that are suicidal in certain areas of the world.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

And? How does that affect the crime rate? How would gun laws change anything you describe?

If Michigan, including Detroit, simply made it legal for ANYone to carry a concealed handgun, as we have always been allowed to do in Vermont, what would happen? Why?

If the result of having the same gun laws was different in Michigan than in Vermont, then the difference cannot be guns.

What is it?

Society is a complex thing Gary, who knew.

It works both ways too you know.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

And? How does that affect the crime rate? How would gun laws change anything you describe?

If Michigan, including Detroit, simply made it legal for ANYone to carry a concealed handgun, as we have always been allowed to do in Vermont, what would happen? Why?

If the result of having the same gun laws was different in Michigan than in Vermont, then the difference cannot be guns.

What is it?

Its socio-economics. Whilst my earlier sarcastic posts hinted at it, thats the difference. Firearms are not really part of the equation.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Holly #######! I'm moving to Toronto.

[Ban Hammer 13,491]

Holly #######! I'm moving to Toronto.

can you play hockey?

[Wishin-n-hopin 15]

Deaths from Cars. Car emissions kill 30,000 people and car collisions kill 46,000 each year in the U.S. (2) Of these, 25,136 were a result of road departure, 9213 intersection-related, and 4749 were pedestrians.

I found this interesting statistic online. It seems that more than 75,000 people die each year in the USA as a result of CARS (directly and indirectly), yet NO ONE is blaming the CARS!!! No one is running around with a slogan that says, "Cars kill people." AND...no one is trying to pass a law that will take cars away from people. Strange, because it seems to me that cars actually kill more people per year then guns ever have. Hmmmm.....guess it's just a matter of perspective, huh?

Edited August 2, 2011 by Wishin-n-hopin

[slim 1,530]

Interaction is what leads to homicides, not availability of weapons. As evidenced above by scandal, Chicago had 4 times as many non-firearm homicides as Toronto so it's safe to say the people of Chicago are more violent than the people of Toronto, even without guns.

The ethnic makeup of Toronto is significantly different than Chicago. Over half the residents are white. A third are Asian. Less than 10% are black and or Latino.

Chicago is over a third black and a quarter Latino with whites rounding out the remaining demographics.

Race is the white elephant (no pun intended) in the room that nobody seems to want to talk about in relation to homicides, firearms-related or otherwise. I don't see many studies on that. I wonder why.

I see where the dude was going with this study, but if he was serious about it, he should've compared things that actually mattered, not just stereotyped inanimate objects as being inherently evil.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

I am disturbed by a number of the racist sterotypes, innuendos and conclusions contained in some of the posts and articles. Instead of just removing all of the racist posts containing racial sterotypes and racist conclusions which would leave very little left in this thread, I'm just going to close this thread to further discussion due to multiple TOS violations.