CDZ The Big City and Small Towns

Curiously, folks remark that crime in Chicago has fallen precipitously. It doesn't look that way to me.

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The chart shows homicides, but the source article notes that shootings follow a similar trend. So, yes, crime/shootings went down, but they went back up, and with a vengeance no less.
"As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, homicides totaled 135, a 71 percent jump over the 79 killings in the same year-earlier period, official Police Department statistics show. That represented the worst first quarter of a year since 136 homicides in 1999, according to the data." (Article date: 31-Mar-2016)
Over the longer term, we see a general decline in Chicago homicides, but the disappearance of Chicago's gun control laws don't appear to have much to do with that.



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Click the image to access the source article. Sorry. The time scale -- 1985 to 2015 in five year increments -- and other labels didn't paste in. (You can also click "view attachment" to see the full chart only.)
  • Red line: Chicago
  • Grey line: Los Angeles
  • Blue line: New York City
Now, I can see the decline in homicides began well before Heller and McDonald. And I can see that in Chicago, homicides have been going up and down since both decisions. As a result, I think it's more than a little disingenuous to cite Chicago for either side of the debate.

Looking at L.A. and NYC, we see L.A.'s homicides have gone back to about what they were before 2010, while NYC has stayed below its 2010 rates. Were the correlation between Heller/McDonald so strongly tied to homicide rates, I would expect to see homicides go down and stay lower than each prior year; that is, we should not see increases in the year over year homicide rate per 100K. Furthermore, I'd expect that to happen across the nation seeing as both are SCOTUS decisions.

I couldn't find a similar chart for D.C. (I'm sure there is one, but I don't know where it is); however, I did find the Metropolitan police department's tabular depiction of the past 20 years of homicides per 100K people. The general trend roughly follows that of L.A.

Now I don't know the demographic trends in Chicago, NYC and L.A. as I do those in D.C. and there's one really huge thing going on in D.C. that I'd wager contributes more than gun control and more than does the absence of gun control legislation. I know that "thing" began in the late 1980s and throughout all of the 1990s because I and my peers were more or less part of it and we and folks like us have continued to be part of that trend. Looking at the chart above, I'd wager the same thing happened in L.A., NYC and Chicago. What is that "thing?" Gentrification and "yuppies" returning to the center of the city.

Gentrification of the inner city began roughly in the late 1970s when, after the 1960s era riots drive upper middle income folks out of the city. Droves of professional gay folks, most often gay men, bought by then run down Georgetown homes, renovated them, made the neighborhood swanky and sold at phenomenal profits to very well off older folks, young "old money" locals, and the so called "power elite" folks whom one saw in the news. The whole process took about 20 yeas and by the 1990s, the only folks buying anything in Georgetown were wealthy, not upper middle income, people.

(Those were also the days of "conventional" real estate loan models; there wasn't that "any credit rating will do," "balloon rates/payments" and "no money down" crap to buy homes. Folks bought what they could afford, not what the lender was willing to make it possible for them to stretch into "debt hell" to "afford now" just because they wanted a "posh" house/address.)

The next generation of gay boys, looking slightly eastward, did the same thing in Dupont Circle. I was part of that wave of investment/development. (I'm not gay and wasn't then either.) I bought a couple row houses on a run down street and fixed them up. Over the next few years, the same thing happened to other homes on all the surrounding streets/blocks and "poof," Dupont Circle became posh and pricey just as Georgetown did. The exact same process has been happening in each of the downtown neighborhoods and now what just 15 years ago were still the blighted and "blown out" remnants of the 1968 riots has become trendy and thriving. It's gotten to the point that there simply now is no such thing as affordable housing (rent or own) in downtown D.C.

You know what else pretty much (but not entirely) disappeared? Shootings, along with all sorts of other crimes, in downtown D.C. One can still get mugged; that can happen anywhere, but one likely won't die from it. Additionally, however, I never saw the gay boys packing heat as they moved about the neighborhood, and it wasn't a "good" neighborhood back in those days. Truly, the night I moved in, there were folks selling drugs at the end of the alley behind my home. Yet, nobody carried guns, and tight as their jeans were and as scantily clad in generally as they were, one would have noticed a gun.

It's worth noting that the time period to which I've referred above was the "Murder Capital" era in D.C. And you know where the shootings were happening? In the non-gentrifying parts of the city, and the whole city prohibited gun possession. Another observation is that the folks who were moving about Dupont -- gay or otherwise -- weren't trying to piss off other folks and they weren't of a mind to get pissed off about the slighted real or imagined slight.

To give you an idea of what Dupont used to look like...

14th and U Streets, NW...1988 and now​

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Rowhouses before and after...not as obviously dramatic a difference because with most of these houses, the work needed was on inside.

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Lessons gleaned from the observations above:
  1. Gentrification reduces murder rates.
  2. Where gay boys go, so to does gentrification.
  3. If you want to revitalize a residential neighborhood, open a gay bar in it.
  4. Being able to possess guns hasn't, in my experience, done anything to increase or decrease murder rates; however, if one has a gun at hand, it's available to be used when one gets pissed off about "whatever."
  5. Not being able to possess guns hasn't, in my experience, done anything to increase or decrease murder rates; however, if one doesn't have have a gun, it's not available to be used when you get pissed off about "whatever." If it can't be used then and there, many folks will be less likely to shoot someone. And a few days later, one may not be so pissed off.
  6. There's not much need for a gun in the city, even in rough neighborhoods.

I know numbers four and five above do nothing for legit defensive occasions, but they do something to help curtail needless killings due to hot tempers. And let's be real. How many shootings don't have something to do with hot tempers and and the opportunity to succeed by using a gun?

The reality in my mind is that no one measure -- gun control, gentrification, attitude adjustment, profiling, etc. -- is going to stop every gun killing or every crime. The combination of several will abate quite a few. Everyone isn't going to like every measure. Folks who like guns won't want gun control. Folks who don't want to move won't like gentrification. Folks who think "there's nothing wrong with me/us/them" won't like attitude adjustment and/or profiling. People in cities won't like having the rules of rurality applied to them and vice versa.

This tone that I hear -- "I" gotta have 100% of the way I want things to be -- coming from the gun control and gun rights camps is total BS in my mind. I honestly do not care at all whether I or anyone else can or cannot legally own a gun. I care that my countrymen are dying or being injured involuntarily from gunshots. I'm not at all convinced that the people on either side are more focused on saving lives and reducing injuries (or the severity of them) than they are about just having their way. The fact is that everyone's gonna have to "give a little" to make a material dent in murder and gun shot rates.


What disapearance of Chicago gun control law....?

Now, I can see the decline in homicides began well before Heller and McDonald. And I can see that in Chicago, homicides have been going up and down since both decisions. As a result, I think it's more than a little disingenuous to cite Chicago for either side of the debate.

Looking at L.A. and NYC, we see L.A.'s homicides have gone back to about what they were before 2010, while NYC has stayed below its 2010 rates. Were the correlation between Heller/McDonald so strongly tied to homicide rates, I would expect to see homicides go down and stay lower than each prior year; that is, we should not see increases in the year over year homicide rate per 100K. Furthermore, I'd expect that to happen across the nation seeing as both are SCOTUS decisions.

You are clueless here.....what changed the gun murder rate in New York was Rudy Guiliani.....he had the police go after nuisance crimes.....because that allowed them to run criminal checks on the perps....they cleared warrants, found guns....and were able to lock up criminals and limit their movement....

Again........it is how you deal with criminals that determines your gun murder rate....not how much paperwork you impose on law abiding citizens....

And Heller didn't have an effect because it only affected law abiding gun owners......the criminals were the ones shooting each other long before the Heller decision........


What we have is obama not prosecuting federal gun crimes....I have linked to actual news sources in other threads that show gun prosecutions are down over 30%......he is also releasing drug felons back on the street...that means many of these guys, convicted on drug charges had weapons charges dropped because of the plea deals....now you have violent felons back on the streets.......
 
Massachuesetts just did.....



Did what? Ban all guns? Or you mad criminals in Mass will have a harder time getting an AR 15?

Will Mass citizens survive without semi auto assault weapons? We'll find out.


Rifles with detachable magazines murdered 157 people in 34 years....in the entire country....from 1982-2016.........

Knives murdered 1,567 in just 2014...and over 1,500 every single year.....

Rifles are not a problem in this country....
 

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