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Chicago: 6 Dead, 63 Wounded In Memorial Day Weekend Shootings

But those city liberals aren't making the gun laws. The conservative state government is.

And once again, your correlation falls apart. Memphis is a much more dangerous city than Chicago despite being in a state with very permissive gun laws. Statistically Atlanta has more violent crime as well. There is no correlation either way between local gun laws and violence. What correlates to violence in a city more than anything else is poverty levels and demographics.
 
How many times have we read about the liberal failures of Chitown and Motown?
Why are we making the suffering of those who can't escape a political pawn or a partisan chest thumping contest?
Just think of the kids, the teens, the elderly, those who can't help themselves and speak for themselves, those who mourn their loved ones.
Get a grip and come up with solutions, solutions that don't just sound good in your head, but solutions that can be implemented right here and right now.
Too many think they have all the solutions, but only very few make things happen.
 
That is not really what I said, and I think you know that.

I do... What I was hoping for was a clarification of your statement. When you claim that socioeconomic issues are behind the violence, are you saying that poor people are more violent than rich people, that the disparity between rich and poor causes the violence or something else??
 
And once again, your correlation falls apart. Memphis is a much more dangerous city than Chicago despite being in a state with very permissive gun laws. Statistically Atlanta has more violent crime as well. There is no correlation either way between local gun laws and violence. What correlates to violence in a city more than anything else is poverty levels and demographics.

Another person making this claim.... Could someone explain to me how it is that poverty causes violence??? Or is it the demographics?? Could you clarify that for us?? Instead of just arguing against an idea that you don't like with generic statements, provide some explanation as to WHY your claims are true. Show us the causal relationship between violence and socioeconomics/demographics.
 
Fair point, but socioeconomic means underline faults making pockets of poor communities more prone to crime.

There is definitely a cultural aspect of ghetto crime, but I wouldn't place it on society as a whole or economics. Kids in the ghetto have all the opportunity to get out of the ghetto through education, but the ghetto culture doesn't value education. So while the ghotto breeds ignorance, the culture also prizes the trappings of wealth. While the vast majority of people in the ghetto accept that their lifestyle will never get them the lifestyle of those they follow in the entertainment industry a small number try to emulate what they see as a way of getting wealth. If someone wants to emulate Ice-Ts rise from street pimp to TV star then they start with pimping, not going to school.

It does not matter if we are talking about Chicago or Detroit (or a dozen other cities) where we have pockets of urban areas where violence is concentrated. There are plenty of spots around Chicago where you are relatively safe compared to other urban statistics, but in some sections of the city the numbers on violence are staggering. Brighton Park, Englewood, Austin, Park Manor, South Shore, etc. where violent crime is above 2K or 3K per 100K statistically speaking. Just focusing on Murders there really is no completely safe spot in Chicago, but some concentrations are in the areas named.

Organized crime congregates in the areas of the city least likely to cooperate with police. A drug gang couldn't move in to an upper class neighborhood because the neighborhood would call the police.

We can argue about what accounts for it in terms of socioeconomic factors, but your stats are a bit off on Chicago "organized crime" as in this area we are talking about street gangs. Some of the stat sources I could find are older (beginning of year) but I doubt conditions have improved all that much in recent months. It is estimated that Chicago has more active gang members than any other city in the US, somewhere in the 150K range. Somewhere between 60%-80% of murders involve gang members. Control of the drug trade, control of other criminal enterprise, what have you we know that it is not just a few thousand trouble makers inflating the stats.

Street gangs are still organized crime. They have a hierarchy and an their criminal efforts are organized. The reason that there are turf wars between rival gangs is because their criminal organizations are fighting over territory to control.

But back to socioeconomic arguments, are gangs a cause or a symptom of the problem? If you trace crime and gang concentrations onto the city overlapping economic factors, such as jobs and income stats, what are we more likely to see? The correlation between largely poor areas of these cities to criminal activity is established enough for us to look at what breaks the cycle. At the same time we cannot help but consider households headed by single parents, education stats in these areas, income quintile ranges in these areas, etc.

As I said, these are cultural issues, not societal issues. Poor families in these communities that value education and instill societal values of hard work raise kids that leave the ghetto. So it isn't the money, it's the mindset.

We have no choice but to evaluate what the stats tell us, and there is correlation between economics, education, social decisions, and resulting concentrations of criminal activity. It may be a rather broad stroke to suggest these correlations but it is all we have to go on. What we cannot do is ignore the stats and blame Chicago alone because of some other factor all the while ignoring the results in Detroit, or Los Angeles, or Indianapolis, or St. Louis, or New Orleans, etc. that all point to the same socioeconomic faults.

That stats do little to prove the why. In my experience the stats more often leave us tilting at windmills by trying to fix spurious causalities.

The reason for gang membership and poverty are far more granular than basic statistics can capture.
 
Another person making this claim.... Could someone explain to me how it is that poverty causes violence??? Or is it the demographics?? Could you clarify that for us?? Instead of just arguing against an idea that you don't like with generic statements, provide some explanation as to WHY your claims are true. Show us the causal relationship between violence and socioeconomics/demographics.

I did not state that I knew the causal relationship. I stated that the clearest correlation one can find in terms of cities an violence is with poverty and demographics. The reason why that is the case is an entirely different discussion.
 
So you emptied a corner. For a day. Bravo!

Next day, the drug and shooting business goes on as if nothing happened. Now what?

Because of people like you, the U.S. is the prison capital of the world with 2 million inmates. No other country comes even close. So maybe it's time to think things over?

BTW, even the Soviet gulags had fewer.

Look like you have given up.
 
I did not state that I knew the causal relationship. I stated that the clearest correlation one can find in terms of cities an violence is with poverty and demographics. The reason why that is the case is an entirely different discussion.

The relationship is as direct as it gets. Just look at Flint, Michigan. From: Why Is Flint Michigan Dangerous - Business Insider

GM's Flint operations employed 80,000 people in 1978. At the time, New York City had a reputation for being the most dangerous place in America — not Flint.

However, the tide started to turn for Flint in the '80s. That's when GM started setting up factories in Mexico and dramatically reduced its operations in Flint. By 2006 GM employed just 8,000 people in Flint,

Flint only employed 122 police officers in 2012, down from 265 five years earlier because of budget cuts. With 122 officers, Flint employs one officer for about every 830 people. New York City covers about 235 people per cop.

Flint's unemployment rate rests as 16.0 percent.

The result: among America's most dangerous cities, there's one city that keeps making the top of the list — Flint, Michigan.

Case closed.
 
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Look like you have given up.

A person who has lung cancer cannot continue smoking.

A city without jobs cannot arrest itself out of the results.

Moral from that is: you have to do both - take care of the underlying cause and the damage the cause caused.

The "law and order" brainiacs don't want to discuss the causes because the solution - living wage employment - would piss off the ruling elites and their love for NAFTA and China's cheap labor.

So they build more prisons. And let unskilled Latinos in by the millions. F****** brilliant.
 
A person who has lung cancer cannot continue smoking.

A city without jobs cannot arrest itself out of the results.

Moral from that is: you have to do both - take care of the underlying cause and the damage the cause caused.

The "law and order" brainiacs don't want to discuss the causes because the solution - living wage employment - would piss off the ruling elites and their love for NAFTA and China's cheap labor.

So they build more prisons. And let unskilled Latinos in by the millions. F****** brilliant.

So it's not their fault they are raping and murdering. And who is this 'they' that is letting in unskilled Latinos by the millions?
 
And once again, your correlation falls apart. Memphis is a much more dangerous city than Chicago despite being in a state with very permissive gun laws. Statistically Atlanta has more violent crime as well. There is no correlation either way between local gun laws and violence. What correlates to violence in a city more than anything else is poverty levels and demographics.

You don't get it.

Your silly laws do NOTHING to stop criminals from doing what they do. And taking guns out of law-abiding citizens only emboldens criminals more.
 
You don't get it.

Your silly laws do NOTHING to stop criminals from doing what they do. And taking guns out of law-abiding citizens only emboldens criminals more.

I am sorry, but you are still missing the point. Yes, local gun laws do nothing to reduce gun violence, but the other side of that is they don't cause anymore gun violence either. Whether you have restrictive gun laws or very permissive local gun laws has nothing to do with the local violent crime rate. There is no correlation to be found there at all.
 
The relationship is as direct as it gets. Just look at Flint, Michigan. From: Why Is Flint Michigan Dangerous - Business Insider

GM's Flint operations employed 80,000 people in 1978. At the time, New York City had a reputation for being the most dangerous place in America — not Flint.

However, the tide started to turn for Flint in the '80s. That's when GM started setting up factories in Mexico and dramatically reduced its operations in Flint. By 2006 GM employed just 8,000 people in Flint,

Flint only employed 122 police officers in 2012, down from 265 five years earlier because of budget cuts. With 122 officers, Flint employs one officer for about every 830 people. New York City covers about 235 people per cop.

Flint's unemployment rate rests as 16.0 percent.

The result: among America's most dangerous cities, there's one city that keeps making the top of the list — Flint, Michigan.

Case closed.

There's a ton of unemployed people in Ohio, and they're not killing people at that rate.

There are jobs in Chicago. So why the violence?

And if there aren't jobs in Flint.....LEAVE!
 
But it would help protect those honest citizens. Police can't be everywhere at once and in time.

Somebody breaks into my house, they'll be hamburger meat.

You having a piece on you while driving down the Stevenson Expressway when shots are being fired from another car would do nothing (This is a common MO here these days). You're either going to get hit in the crossfire or you aren't
 
I do... What I was hoping for was a clarification of your statement. When you claim that socioeconomic issues are behind the violence, are you saying that poor people are more violent than rich people, that the disparity between rich and poor causes the violence or something else??

No, it is not exclusive to any single facet of socioeconomic issues. It is not exclusively about rich and poor, and not exclusively about single parent homes to traditional homes, or any other one factor.

We have to consider all the elements that make up social and economic function.

Just because we can show that economics in these areas is depressed does not mean we can conclude that "the poor are more violent than rich people." But we can offer associations of poor and uneducated to likely outcome in life (income quintile, lean to criminal behavior, etc.) Just because we can show that social choices in these areas lend themselves to single parent households does not mean we can conclude "everyone from a single parent is going to end up a criminal." But, we can talk about percentages in results from the social decisions made. It is not an all or nothing argument, nor is it about any one factor that creates the conditions of parts of Chicago, or Detroit, or LA, or wherever else.

The reality is we cannot simply sweep this under the rug, nor can we blame the gun and claim we have solved anything, nor can we jail more people and claim we solved anything.

You are seemingly looking for a singular answer or reason for crime in pockets of our urban areas, and it does not exist on that level.
 
Another person making this claim.... Could someone explain to me how it is that poverty causes violence??? Or is it the demographics?? Could you clarify that for us?? Instead of just arguing against an idea that you don't like with generic statements, provide some explanation as to WHY your claims are true. Show us the causal relationship between violence and socioeconomics/demographics.
These problem areas had industry, manufacturing jobs. They started disappearing in the late 70's and early 80's. People become desperate and do stupid **** so fathers are sitting in prison while their children grow up in single parent homes with a parent that probably lacks proper parenting skills. They grow up with no positive role models without guidance or direction. They wind up on the streets and a gang becomes their family. They get lured in by the older seasoned gang members with wads of cash, new clothes and cars. So they get initiated in and start earning for the gang. Selling drugs( corners are looked at as real estate to earn money ) robbery and burglary. That's their world and that's all they know. They're not going to work at J J Fish for minimum wage. These young men have no sense of consequence and a "murder" gives them "street cred" Wash, rinse repeat. When a child grows up knowing only chaos, dysfunction and violence it's near impossible for that kid to turn out on the up and up without some external intervention early on.
 
1. So it's not their fault they are raping and murdering.

2. And who is this 'they' that is letting in unskilled Latinos by the millions?

1. I disagree.

2. "They" are your corrupt state and federal governments, and your ruling elites.

Anything else?
 
1. I disagree.

2. "They" are your corrupt state and federal governments, and your ruling elites.

Anything else?

Maybe we should give some credit to Reagan for kick-starting the "lets move as many manufacturing jobs overseas as possible" movement. Essentially turning these problem areas into zero economy Mc-Job wastelands. No I won't do that, it's too simplistic even though there is some truth to it.
 
These problem areas had industry, manufacturing jobs. They started disappearing in the late 70's and early 80's. People become desperate and do stupid **** so fathers are sitting in prison while their children grow up in single parent homes with a parent that probably lacks proper parenting skills. They grow up with no positive role models without guidance or direction. They wind up on the streets and a gang becomes their family. They get lured in by the older seasoned gang members with wads of cash, new clothes and cars. So they get initiated in and start earning for the gang. Selling drugs( corners are looked at as real estate to earn money ) robbery and burglary. That's their world and that's all they know. They're not going to work at J J Fish for minimum wage. These young men have no sense of consequence and a "murder" gives them "street cred" Wash, rinse repeat. When a child grows up knowing only chaos, dysfunction and violence it's near impossible for that kid to turn out on the up and up without some external intervention early on.

Finally a voice of reason!

I wrote the very same thing except you did it better.

That "Wash, rinse repeat" is so spot on. Arrest them, throw 'em in prison, let them learn new tricks how to be better criminals and let them out. Moronic is a weak word for this.

The constant part is the self-perpetuating criminal justice system and the billions we spend on lawyers, prosecutors, judges, wardens, guards, parole officers, and on and on..If all Americans decided to obey all laws, they would criminalize walking too fast.

It's very similar to the DoD, which always wants to have a war somewhere to justify its bloated existence.
 
Finally a voice of reason!

I wrote the very same thing except you did it better.

That "Wash, rinse repeat" is so spot on. Arrest them, throw 'em in prison, let them learn new tricks how to be better criminals and let them out. Moronic is a weak word for this.

The constant part is the self-perpetuating criminal justice system and the billions we spend on lawyers, prosecutors, judges, wardens, guards, parole officers, and on and on..If all Americans decided to obey all laws, they would criminalize walking too fast.

It's very similar to the DoD, which always wants to have a war somewhere to justify its bloated existence.

What I feel would get the ball rolling on change is investment in these communities. Investment can bring opportunities and give people options thus changing lives. I live on the North side and I see all of the investment going into the affluent white yuppie areas near me. (But there are predominantly black communities that are thriving like Bronzeville and Beverly. They have infrastructure and jobs. It can be done.
 
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These problem areas had industry, manufacturing jobs. They started disappearing in the late 70's and early 80's. People become desperate and do stupid **** so fathers are sitting in prison while their children grow up in single parent homes with a parent that probably lacks proper parenting skills. They grow up with no positive role models without guidance or direction. They wind up on the streets and a gang becomes their family. They get lured in by the older seasoned gang members with wads of cash, new clothes and cars. So they get initiated in and start earning for the gang. Selling drugs( corners are looked at as real estate to earn money ) robbery and burglary. That's their world and that's all they know. They're not going to work at J J Fish for minimum wage. These young men have no sense of consequence and a "murder" gives them "street cred" Wash, rinse repeat. When a child grows up knowing only chaos, dysfunction and violence it's near impossible for that kid to turn out on the up and up without some external intervention early on.

Yet there places in this country with crushing poverty (parts of the Appalachians come to mind) that don't have these problems. They find ways to deal with poverty that don't default to crime and violence (no, I'm not saying that they don't ever resort to crime and violence, just that it's normally the last step, instead of the first).
 
Maybe we should give some credit to Reagan for kick-starting the "lets move as many manufacturing jobs overseas as possible" movement. Essentially turning these problem areas into zero economy Mc-Job wastelands. No I won't do that, it's too simplistic even though there is some truth to it.

You meant "credit", not credit, I assume.

Since you mentioned manufacturing jobs, the scariest fact about the state of knowledge of economy is that most, including our elected officials, are clueless how wealth is created, as opposed to just being moved around - aka casino syndrome.
 
Yet there places in this country with crushing poverty (parts of the Appalachians come to mind) that don't have these problems. They find ways to deal with poverty that don't default to crime and violence (no, I'm not saying that they don't ever resort to crime and violence, just that it's normally the last step, instead of the first).

They have their own problems, The manufacturing of meth is rising in the Appalachians and wreaking havok on people there. You can't compare the Appalachians to the West side of Chicago. It's more spread out in the mountains and in the city more people are in much closer proximity to one another. The dynamics and environment are completely different and that needs to be considered.
 
They have their own problems, The manufacturing of meth is rising in the Appalachians and wreaking havok on people there. You can't compare the Appalachians to the West side of Chicago. It's more spread out in the mountains and in the city more people are in much closer proximity to one another. The dynamics and environment are completely different and that needs to be considered.

One of them: Hillary and her deep care for the coal miners.
 
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