Stream: Homicide Rates, Black vs. White, Sex, Guns & Government

Since the Civil War, slavery outright has been considered immoral. So enslavement by other means had to occur. The easiest way to enslave a population is dire poverty. The war on poverty and the endless parade of brain-dead celebrities telling us one in five Americans are hungry (a made up statistic with NO relation to reality whatsoever) gives us the illustion of poverty in massive numbers. Then ripping apart the traditional family and leaving people dependent on the government. Lastly, increase crime and fear and hatred so the government is the only “caring” thing out there. Seems we are basically at enslavement at this point.

I noticed the other day in a picture of the New Black Panthers the person in the photo was carrying one of those evil assault rifles with his finger OFF the trigger. I don’t know if that was a posed picture or not. However, after decades of the most poor, careless and negligent gun handling in the world, Hollywood finally stopped showing people and police running around with their fingers on the trigger, guns pointed up in the air (useful only if you want to have a negligent discharge kill the upstairs tenant) and have people with their finger off the trigger, guns pointed down. I have to wonder if this has had an impact. How many idiots did what they saw on TV (you know, the TV people who CARE so much?) and ended up killing bystanders. I doubt there’s any way to figure that out, but it would be interesting to know.

Until about 1910, not all jurisdictions were reporting homicide data to the DoJ. So the apparently low rates at the beginning of the first graph are an artifact.

Pointing out that blacks commit a hugely disproportionate amount of crime is racist.

Well, I’d like to see some graphs depicting rates based on income, or developed environments, or on migration patterns, or on the availability of guns. This data tells you nothing but the races involved, as if no other context mattered. Why you cons focus so much on race, something we can not do anything about, instead of other factors we can actually address, I’ll never understand. I guess it’s just more good ol’ ‘throw up yer hands,’ Social Darwinist conservativism. Sadly.

JMJ

JMJ: So you’re back on the socialist “more money will fix this”. Sorry, blacks have a higher income than ever before courtesy of the government. More money won’t help. Guns—all races have millions of those. Blacks don’t have more guns than whites, though whites may have more legally owned guns.

Yes, it shows only the races because that was what we were discussing. Causes are a different issue.

Why do you focus so much on failed government programs that enslaved the blacks and produced the exact things you suggest blaming for the homicide rates among that race? Why are you champion of the slaveholders? Progressive enslavement, sadly.

Ray: JMJ agrees, it seems.

Well, I’d like to see some graphs depicting rates based on income, or developed environments, or on migration patterns, or on the availability of guns.

Guns were more readily available in the 1950s and 60s. I could have ordered a .22 rifle from an ad in the back of a comic book. My wife toted a rifle at age 12 when she went hunting with her father. Movements for gun control didn’t blossom until Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers marched into the CA legislature bearing arms. The didn’t even threaten anyone. It was for self-protection, as they believed the Man had all the roscoes.

Environmentally, you can compare the murder rates in the northern tier of states against those of the Canadian provinces they border. The Canadian provinces have a higher murder rate than do the States abutting them. Washington State, Idaho, Montana, N. Dakota, Michigan, upstate New York, or upper New England.

A Canadian friend of mine once told me two things:
a) Most murders are committed by Southerners, black and white, and their descendants. If you removed the South and those who migrated from the South to the North, the US would have the murder rate of Denmark. [This may be due to the “honor culture” of that region. Not much difference between “Suh! Yuh insult mah honor!” and “You dissin’ me, man?” save the rules governing the duel that follows.]
b) The murder rate by Japanese-Americans is about the same as in Japan; that for Scandinavian-Americans is about the same as Scandinavia; Irish-Americans v. Irish, and so on. So there is a cultural component learned in ethnic populations. An especially violent bunch, he said, were the Scots Borderers who settled first in Ulster, then in Appalachia. Murders skyrocketed in the cities in the 1850s when the famine Irish arrived with their habits of resentment and secret societies.

Poverty per se does not seem important. Most poor people are women and they don’t seem to kill as much as gangsters, who are often flush. Greed matters: for control of bootlegging or drugs, gambling, et al.

The big factor appears to be the age cohort and generation. The murder rate has been declining in recent years because the murderous cohort has been aging out of the business. Some generations are less inclined to kill than others. The GI generation did not come home from the War and create a reign of terror. Perhaps they had gotten it out of their system, or perhaps they had a more realistic world-view.

Hope this helps.

JMJ evidently believes that availability of guns explains the murder rate. In the late great USSR civilian possession of firearms was prohibited and they had a murder rate twice the US murder rate. There are a lot of people that believe that guns cause murder and if you just get rid of the guns the murders will stop. Didn’t work in the USSR.

The state with the most guns, per capita, is Wyoming. Wyoming is quite peaceable, and if one leaves out suicide, hardly anyone is killed with a gun here. Hardly anyone is murdered with any means.

The district with second largest ownership is D.C. These guns are in the hands of agents of enforcement bureaus for the most part, yet D.C. is not a very safe town.

I have west-coast, urban, relatives who sincerely believe they are at personal peril because someone in another state can openly carry, or own a wide variety of weapons, including those for which the only purpose is target shooting on range. I can’t think of a better example of magical thinking.

” Why you cons focus so much on race, something we can not do anything about, instead of other factors we can actually address, I’ll never understand.”

So you agree we no longer need to report the race of policemen when they shoot innocent law abiding ethnics then? Afterall we cannot do anything about race.