On Monday, the New York Times reported on the dramatic increase in Chicago’s homicide rate. The city’s murder rate from January to June has increased 38% compared to the same period in 2011. That’s 240 murders so far– putting the city on track for more than 500 murders this year. So why is the city suddenly much more violent?
The Times speculates that a number of things could be causing the increase: the unusually warm winter, the splintering and proliferation of gangs, Rahmbo’s cuts to the police department budget. It’s unlikely, of course, that there’s only one factor contributing, which makes the problem that much more difficult to solve.
Luckily we have the New York Times commenters– who are all apparently very familiar with my fair city and experts on urban crime policy– to show us how easy it is to solve a problem like murder from the futon in basement of their moms’ townhouses. Let’s hear them out, shall we?
Chicago needs more guns– but only for white people.
From commenter JMA from Chicago Pennsylvania:
Let me see if I understand the argument. We should violate the Second Amendment because young African-American men are killing each other with handguns?
Here are two commonsense responses to that half-baked idea. First, why would that make their handguns go away? Second, why not make gun ownership whites-only? Yes, yes, I know, leftists will screech about that violating the constitutional rights of blacks, but so what? They’re already in favor of trampling the constitution, so why not trample the 11th Amendment instead of the Second?
That sounds like a great idea– let’s implement a system in which African Americans (since they are the only ones who commit murders, ever) have no constitutional rights and are not allowed to own guns. That sounds familiar. Also, I do not think the 11th Amendment means what you think it means, moron.
It’s welfare, stupid.
So says commenter Gilbert Zimmerman, Jr., who finds it important to note that he has a public policy law degree, and lives in the very urban Chicago Morris Township, NJ:
The reasons to pull the plug on the Democratic Political machine grows each day. Chicago is a tragic symptom of the progressive plague we invited into our lives since the time of the Great Society, when the Democratic party decided to make the African American community a collective ward of the state and lock in their vote. It’s worked like a charm hasn’t it?
Do you know when African Americans were literally wards of the state, Gilbert? When they were slaves! Fun fact. You and JMA should hang out. I think you’d get along.
Legalize drugs!
That’s the argument of SR from Dallas.
But a stake can be put in the ground, the entire ghetto social structure can be changed if the political will to do so existed.
Legalize drugs, solve “ghetto social structure”! Easy peasy. Can you first define that for me, SR? What exactly is a “ghetto social structure”? I’ll wait.
Guns don’t kill people, babies kill people.
Mr. Rational from “Phila” would like us to know that he has the solution.
Guns don’t kill people, children raised without any type of family structure kill people.
It drives me crazy that the 900 pound gorilla is ignored. If African Americans would refrain from having babies until a stable, continuous relationship is established between the mother and father, these killings would abate to levels equal to or less than all other groups in a matter of 10 years.
Ten years, you say? Astonishing! And I had no idea that guns were not involved. I’ll be sure to cross the street the next time I see a suspicious-looking stroller.
Ban baseball bats!
HSC2005, who–oddly– claims to live in Chicago but lists his city as Virginia Beach, has the scoop on what the real problem is.
We need to send the military into the southside… There have been 5 “bat attacks” perpetrated by black or hispanic gangs in the Wicker park neighborhood alone, all against young women.
Now, this one stopped me in my tracks. Five bat attacks in my neighborhood?! Roving gangs of baseball players looking for iPhones to steal? I haven’t heard about this, though there was this incident a few years ago that garnered a great deal of media attention. Note that this incident was perpetrated by a man in his late twenties and his girlfriend– not a roving teenage gang of black or Latino kids. And the perpetrator was from the city’s North Side. But don’t let the facts get in the way of your bigotry, HSC2005 bot. Yes, let’s please send the military to the city’s South Side because that connects to your argument in some racist way. He also makes some other claims, including a string of random shootings on I-90, but I don’t even have to fact-check that to know that it’s bullshit.
Everyone has fetal alcohol syndrome.
That’s the nugget of insight that Fleurdelis from the “Mainly Midwest” has to share with us.
For many years I have volunteered in Minneapolis in a orphanage/day treatment facility. The biggest driver of young black children into gangs is their own learning disability stemming from the fetal alcohol syndrome so many suffer from. If you can’t learn you can’t finish school… Fix this problem and you are on second base for eradicating gangs.
Thank you, Fleurdelis, for diagnosing millions of children who you have never met. We’ll get right on that.
So what is the take-away here, aside from the provision of your daily dose of ignorant internet blather? These comments, to me, sum up a lot of what is wrong with the way we talk about race and cities in the United States. Everyone has a solution, but they’re never a part of it. Urban crime is something that happens far away to people who are not us– and, most importantly, are not like us. The discussion is just a way to rehash the culture wars of the 1960s or complain about teenage pregnancy. I don’t doubt that teenage pregnancies aren’t a real problem, but the ease with which people seem to dismiss it as an easily remedied problem is enraging. The state of our public schools, the mass incarceration of men of color, the lack of well-paying blue collar jobs so that parents can work reasonable hours and be home to monitor their kids after schools, and, of course, the existence of vicious gang violence are all parts of the problem, and none of these can be easily solved by just one segment of the population. It’s going to take massive political, economic and social reform. We’re all a part of the problem– and the solution– whether or not we want to admit it.
But it’s just easier to comment about it on the internet.
