2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 111,952
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I had a thread on my idea.....now here is another article on serious gun crime ideas...
Texas Shooting -- Gun-Control Proposals That Would Not Reduce Gun Crime | National Review
The failings of our prosecutorial, probation, parole, and mental-health systems are fundamental and in some cases catastrophic. In spite of that, the U.S. homicide rate today is about what it was in the Eisenhower years. There is not very much cause for panic, and there is not very much cause for a panicked crackdown on the legal sale of firearms through firearms dealers. But demagogues benefit from panic.
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What’s missing is ordinary, unglamorous, labor-intensive law-enforcement and public-health work — i.e., the one thing no one employed by government will seriously contemplate and no politician answering to government workers and their unions will seriously consider.
Instead: We complain about “straw buyers” but rarely prosecute them; some federal prosecutors refuse as a matter of publicly stated policy to take a straw-buyer case unless it is part of a larger (sexier) organized-crime investigation. Chicago manages to convict fewer than one in five of those arrested on weapons charges. A New York Times investigation found that about 90 percent of the killers identified in New York murder cases had prior criminal histories, often histories of violent crime. (About 70 percent of New York’s homicide victims also had prior criminal arrests.) On and on it goes: Ordinary crime and ordinary criminals, ordinary bureaucratic failure, and the occasional act of armed histrionics to keep the headlines churning.
The dentist laying down eight grand for a Wilson .45 down at the local gun shop, checking his email on his iPhone as he waits for his background check to be processed, is not likely to be a very important contributor to our national problem of criminal violence. But he is easy to police, and the licensed businesses (with fixed addresses, operating hours, business records, etc.) catering to him are easy to police, inasmuch as they largely police themselves.
The actual criminals? Chasing those troublesome scamps around the block is a lot of work. And expensive: By the end of the first quarter of 2018, the Philadelphia police department had used up all of its $57 million allotment of overtime pay for the year. The Philadelphia police department pays actual police officers substantial compensation to do things like act as program managers at the Police Athletic League. Philadelphia being Philadelphia, they manage even to do that corruptly.
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Texas Shooting -- Gun-Control Proposals That Would Not Reduce Gun Crime | National Review
The failings of our prosecutorial, probation, parole, and mental-health systems are fundamental and in some cases catastrophic. In spite of that, the U.S. homicide rate today is about what it was in the Eisenhower years. There is not very much cause for panic, and there is not very much cause for a panicked crackdown on the legal sale of firearms through firearms dealers. But demagogues benefit from panic.
----------
What’s missing is ordinary, unglamorous, labor-intensive law-enforcement and public-health work — i.e., the one thing no one employed by government will seriously contemplate and no politician answering to government workers and their unions will seriously consider.
Instead: We complain about “straw buyers” but rarely prosecute them; some federal prosecutors refuse as a matter of publicly stated policy to take a straw-buyer case unless it is part of a larger (sexier) organized-crime investigation. Chicago manages to convict fewer than one in five of those arrested on weapons charges. A New York Times investigation found that about 90 percent of the killers identified in New York murder cases had prior criminal histories, often histories of violent crime. (About 70 percent of New York’s homicide victims also had prior criminal arrests.) On and on it goes: Ordinary crime and ordinary criminals, ordinary bureaucratic failure, and the occasional act of armed histrionics to keep the headlines churning.
The dentist laying down eight grand for a Wilson .45 down at the local gun shop, checking his email on his iPhone as he waits for his background check to be processed, is not likely to be a very important contributor to our national problem of criminal violence. But he is easy to police, and the licensed businesses (with fixed addresses, operating hours, business records, etc.) catering to him are easy to police, inasmuch as they largely police themselves.
The actual criminals? Chasing those troublesome scamps around the block is a lot of work. And expensive: By the end of the first quarter of 2018, the Philadelphia police department had used up all of its $57 million allotment of overtime pay for the year. The Philadelphia police department pays actual police officers substantial compensation to do things like act as program managers at the Police Athletic League. Philadelphia being Philadelphia, they manage even to do that corruptly.
133
