To demonstrate how well gun control works, 19 folks were shot within a short period last night in Chicago, according to the Tribune. Chicago’s gun laws are as strict as the city of New York, where a gunman and police shot several bystanders today.
Thirteen people were shot in separate incidences in the space of a half hour in Chi-town.
General Allen called to tell us that those shootings happened because of Ramadan and the resulting Eid al-Fitr celebration, despite the fact that probably none of the victims or shooters are Muslims. Allen went on to say that folks in Chicago need to drink more water to prevent further shootings. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III could be heard in the background blaming tattoos for the shootings.
Afghan President Hamad Karzai emailed to tell us that it was probably because of Canadian intelligence officers who have been infiltrating Chicago. Or something.
Thanks to Old Trooper for the link.
Yeah, those “Chicago values” at work again, right Rahm?
I don’t think Bloomberg talked about this and I can’t find it on any of the alphabet news sites, either. They are losing their minds about the NYC shooting, though.
Bloomberg has everyone completely safe in the City too. Wonder how that gun control is working outside the Empire State Building?
Also, the alphabets, including FoxNews, are ignoring what Bloomberg admitted; that some of the wounded were shot by police and are going ahead and attributing them all to the original shooter. Gotta love the sensationalist media. This will probably be a lead story for the entire weekend.
Funny post.
Well-written.
Old Trooper: it’s unfortunate that some of the wounded were hit by police rounds. But the alternative was to let an armed murderer walk away and blend into the crowd – and escape. Not sure that’s such a good idea.
The phrase “collateral damage” is a harsh one. But sometimes it’s the reality that can’t be avoided.
Sure there were 19 shot BUT at least the city government is serious about putting an end to Chick-Fil-A.
Because most of the shootings in Chicago are gang/drug related they get a bit less airplay than the “we think it was a crazed vet on a rampage” story.
Standard murders go pretty much disregarded nationally, even though with a murder rate of 16,000 per year on average over the last ten years that is 43 dead bodies a day. Stories about actual murders happening at the rate of 1 about every 34 minutes every day 24/7/365 are just not nationally exciting unless it’s in the category of missing white girls, crazed vets, bullied high schoolers with deadly retaliation, and white/hispanic neighborhood watch members killing a black kid. The daily slaughter of 44 citizens has no real ratings appeal so we don’t bother. While I was out west for a bit it amazed me that there was an icon for the evening news for bodies in the desert like the new england stations have icons for snow…it’s just another event that happens every day.
It’s always easier to discuss the hyberbolic events instead of the troublesome daily issues for the news media. They no longer like to do any heavy lifting into the where and why of a story, just make assumptions and have a panel of morons of opposing views attack each other for most of the “show”. It’s uncomfortable after all when we can’t blame terrorists or nut jobs, it means you have to look at the kind of society we are that 16,000 of our fellow citizens are killed by other fellow citizens for economic reasons or relationship reasons or a host of other issues. What kind of a society creates this many murderers? Those questions are uncomfortable, better to show the aberrant white mom who murdered her daughter and discuss that one single case for the better part of a year, rather than focus on the 15,999 other dead people.
With all the shooting taking place in weapon unfriendly cities, how is it Bloomers or Rahm haven’t been hit yet? Are they in “undisclosed locations”?
@8. Damn good points. Damn good.
Actually, VOV, the use of absolute numbers in dealing with crime is not of much value. Absolute numbers are not a normalized indicator; with growing population, they will grow whether conditions change or not.
More valuable indicators are normalized rate statistics – e.g., the number of a particular crime per a defined number of population. For murder, that is often quoted as in terms of per 100k population – e.g., 4.8 murders per 100,000 population. These translate more readily into estimates of how likely one is to be the victim, statistically speaking, of violent crime.
As a nation, by rate measurements the US has less homicides today than at any time since the early 1960s. Data may be found at
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
Yes, it’s sad that 14,748 persons were murdered in the US in 2010. But that’s much better than 1968, when only 13,800 were murdered – because in 1968, there were nearly 110 million fewer Americans than there were in 2010.
As an aside: the data shows a rather pronounced climb beginning in the mid-1960s, and appearing to accelerate in the late 1960s and 1970s. This is about the same time that gun control legislation “took off” in the US as a reaction to several prominent assassinations (JFK, King, RFK). It peaked in 1980, and again in 1992. Since then, it’s been rather steadily declining.
Oddly enough, the current push to allow citizens to actually use their 2nd Amendment rights to keep and bear arms started in the mid/late 1980s. I wonder if there could be a connection between that and the broad, continued decline starting 4 or 5 years later?
Real clever like strict gun laws in a city will stop all the nut cases in the suburbs from comming to the city. Get real if gun control is to have a chance it has to be valid for the whole country.
I have a plan to end gun crime in America. It is a serious and well thought out plan. I am not going to share it with you though because that will just give certian anti social elements in the country time to work out a counter strategy to sabotage the program.
It will work at some point in the future when Americans finally understand that they need a nanny to care for a guide them and that nanny is me.
Your older Brother,
Curt Jones
Thanks Hondo, I was using some census data, Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI stats which are consistent with your data. I do understand about the rates per 100k, my point was that the news media certainly enjoys a good story about only certain types of victims and perpetrators.
The fact that blacks have a victimization rate 6 times higher than whites (19.6 per 100k vs. 3.3 per 100k for whites) as recently as 2008 (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=311) indicates there are social factors for blacks that generate more perpetrators and victims. Analyzing that for the media is a difficult process, and discussing how the situation can be addressed isn’t a sexy news story for the 7pm lead when you could go with the “tot-mom” or “crazed-vet” angle instead. The sensational story gets the nod, but because those stories are aberrations in the crime cycle the analysis and conclusions drawn by the talking heads are inherently wrong. And you are right I believe about the effects of gun control, clearly some of the most dangerous places in the country are those with correspondingly higher levels of restriction on the possession of firearms, and the safest seem to be where there are less restrictions.
Analyzing that data, along with the appropriate socio-economic indicators should be a discussion our politicians should also be having instead of worrying about the effects of two gays tying the knot, or whether or not America as we know it will be destroyed because of a chicken restaurant owner’s poor choice of charity. I am more concerned with a pervasive depressive economy that makes the selling of drugs and the subsequent appropriation of territory through violence more lucrative than education and employment in a non-criminal activity for so many black males.
As you have discussed previously this current administration clearly has nothing to offer when it comes to driving business, education, and the resulting economy to a better place to address these serious issues. I also am not naive enough to believe any of this will ever be a mainstream evening news discussion, but I do believe Romney is better equipped to get the economy on track because none of this gets better if the current situation remains unabated. Which ultimately makes the white Mormon conservative better for blacks than the Black Liberal from Chicago…
Jeez Hondo. I think one of his points–at least as I understood it–was the spotlight placed on the loss of some lives while the loss of others merits barely a mention in the crime beat reports. The larger–more unsettling–issue regards the question of where we are as a society. Such introspection is good for the soul if done sparingly. If done regularly, it will drive one either to the nuthouse or a monastery.
Sorry. I should have checked before I hit submit. As a consequence, I was unaware of the reply at 13.
It is simply a fact that there are more young, black men killed from drive-by shootings that there ever were from lynchings. That observation should lead to making the prevention of these senseless deaths a priority, but instead of addressing the real proiblems, those who could do so would rather call we who see these things racists.
It’s crazy.
@15 I tend to leave walls of text, sorry about that…and I agree with Hondo I didn’t take anything in his response to be critical. I read his response as a clarification of data direct to the point I was making (or attempting to make, I am sometimes a bit obtuse and obfuscate my point).
In any event thank you for the kind words, I appreciate you taking the time to read them.
Priceless comments about Allen and Chandler.
OWB, you left out the drive-by shootings in the Latino communities. That should be included in a generalization. It isn’t just black males; the Latinos have a demographic in this, also.
@16 Agreed, pointing out that blacks are currently committing a lot of crime and killing each other if you are white is perceived as a racist entry into most conversations. Talking about the whys and wherefores of black on black crime by whitey is uncomfortable for some people, it’s because they feel this discussion is meant to be critical as opposed to analytical. Correction and resolution seldom come without serious critical analysis however and those who are offended would be wise to at least offer an analysis of their own along with potential solutions instead of pretending the problem is just perception as the data clearly refutes that claim.
The last time I checked on line, the last documented case of an African-American being murdered by a KKK memeber was in 1980. yest, Jesse Al and Dear Leader seem to throw around allegations haphazrdly regarding White on Black crime. They would do better to focus on the Black on Black violence,but there is no money for them to extort in that.
The most general issue for me (am I really alone in this??) is that any citizen killed by another citizen is one too many except to protect one’s life or property. I seriously do not care the ethnicity, age, etc of either the victim or the killer. I also don’t care the weapon used.
For instance, is there ANY acceptable loss of life from drunk drivers? Not to me. Well, when the drunk only takes out his or her own self, I really don’t care much, but more often than not, the drunk survives but others do not.
All just to say that, until people decide to quit tolerating excuses for the senseless loss of any life, this mess will continue. Pointing fingers and calling people names who articulate the obvious isn’t helpful.
@18
I’m surprised Shinseki didn’t chime it suggesting berets.
@6: I’m not saying there wasn’t an instance of collateral damage, but what I’m saying is the media, and to some extent Bloomberg, are attempting to frame this to their own agenda. Why not tell the truth? Why does it always have to be framed by their agenda? That’s all I’m saying about it. Just like with the Aurora shooting; they lost their collective minds, yet 13 people were shot in a 30 minute time frame in Chicago and a total of 19 people last night and it doesn’t even get an honorable mention. There have been over 600 homicides in Chicago this year and we aren’t even at the end of the year, yet. Chicago has the most strict gun laws, next to DC, in the country, yet no one wants to talk about that, because it doesn’t fit the agenda.
@24 Old Trooper, as long as there is political coin to be gained by bending something like this to an agenda, that is what will happen.
Old Trooper: your first post seemed to me to be saying the NYPD shouldn’t have taken down the guy. I was pointing out the fact that they were in a “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” situation. Let him get away, and you’ve got an armed murderer on the loose. Take him down, and you risk innocent casualties.
I fully agree that Bloomie and the MSM are spinning this for their own ends and ignoring reality here, and that’s reprehensible. But it’s also nothing less than I’d expect from either.
The media covered Empire State bldg shooting wall to wall today – not a peep about Chicago violence. Shootings so common place in Chicago, people are just desensitized/bored -becomes background noise. As long as its NIMBY or not white on black – its quickly swept under the rug.
@22 OWB I agree with your comments, and cars are indeed deadlier than firearms in this country by about 3-1 (36k dead approximately from car crashes of all types).
I was trying to ask why there is little airplay for any of this other death that occurs. It’s my opinion that these other dead people’s stories and lives aren’t sexy enough to lead the 7pm or even a 60 minutes/dateline news program. When is the last time Nancy Grace spent a year discussing a missing black girl? Or even a week discussing a murdered black child of either sex? I’m not suggesting she is a racist, I’m only pointing out that what seems to get a lot of coverage are dead white women and children, missing white women and children, and crazy ass veterans on a rampage, or high schoolers on a murderous rampage.
I don’t know why that is, but it is interesting to me and I would like to examine more data certainly, maybe I am wrong and I just miss all the news stories about the dramatic rescues and terrible tragedies of minority victims on the evening talking head shows.
When the media stops having wet dreams about blonde damsels in distress or the ‘crazy vet’ dialog — just generalizing here — and how much advertising revenue they can get out of that stuff, then maybe we’ll see some valid reporting, like the Syrian rebels’ videos coming out of Aleppo and Damascus.
I do not, however, hold out much hope for that in my lifetime.
You said “wet dreams” nice….
That’s about a serious as our news media get these days. It p1sses me off to no end and I alway forget what the realist is, that they are selling soap, and cars and beer and all kinds of happy feeling meds so as long as their target demographic keeps watching, I guess they have no motivation to actually investigate the issues of the day. I keep forgetting the news media is really just crap that’s on between commercials, and it’s only designed to keep your attention long enough that you don’t switch away from the advertising.
realist equals reality in previous post, sorry…
VOV – I was always fascinated by the demographics of all that stuff as well, not as news stories but in an academic sense. Probably explains the sociology major. In solving problems, being able to read statistics, trends, and get at root causes of things can be helpful. Given that so many lefties are soc majors, it has always been a huge disappointment to me that they mostly ignore what they learned instead of putting those skills to good use.
Ah, well. Most of them seem to be busy developing bogus poll data!
OWB – it’s been my observation that many if not most go into “soft science” fields such as sociology because they are mathematically inept. They may be capable of using a software package to calculate statistics and applying rules, but many really have no concept of what those statistics and rules actually mean – or what trends they can discern.
And, unfortunately, it’s also been my experience that – as you point out – many who go into that field are indeed left-leaning. Of that IMO small minority in the field who can comprehend what the statistics are telling them, a substantial fraction are often ideologically predisposed to ignore or distort the results to match their ideology.
In Chitown,Rahm has paid the gangs $1,000,000 dollars twice for a creasefire. I think the gangs are using the money for better weapons and range time to improve their accurancy.
Well, at least SOMEONE is using the range. Judging by the events in NYC, it sure as hell ain’t the cops.
I think of all this violence is directly attritubable to Chick-Fil-A’s stance on gay marriage. You know, the whole “Chicago values” thing.