November 20, 2007
Less guns, more shootings
Headline: Effectiveness of D.C. gun ban still a mystery
Actually, there's not a lot of mystery here:
Yet the gun culture on the city's mean streets during the crack epidemic has not abated, police statistics show. Even as the homicide toll declined in D.C. after 1991, the percentage of killings committed with firearms remained far higher than it was when the ban was passed.Guns were used in 63 percent of the city's 188 slayings in 1976. Last year, out of 169 homicides, 81 percent were shootings.
There are more gun crimes today than before they instituted the gun ban. "Complete failure" doesn't really begin to cover it.
In making by far their boldest public policy decision, Washington's first elected officials wanted other jurisdictions, especially neighboring states, to follow the lead of the nation's capital by enacting similar gun restrictions, cutting the flow of firearms into the city from surrounding areas."We were trying to send out a message," recalled Sterling Tucker, the council chairman at the time.
And they did just that. Unfortunately, the message was "we have an unarmed citizenry. Come and get us."
Via Fark.
(Cross-posted on Rightwing News where I am guest-blogging on Tuesday.)
UPDATE: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the DC gun ban case.
Posted by Karol at November 20, 2007 02:21 AM | TrackBackTechnorati Tags: Gun+Ban+DC Gun+Ban
Living on the outskirts of DC, it's been painful to watch a city that coule have so much life and beauty be continually torn down from within by a murder rate that most other cities would find intolerable.
Posted by: Jimmie at November 20, 2007 08:41 AMIt's no mystery. DC is like indigo blue on the political map, and the ineffectiveness of gun control is an enormous blind-spot in Democratic thinking.
Posted by: Joe Grossberg at November 20, 2007 11:47 AMShouldn't that title read 'IN-effectiveness of the Gun Ban still a mystery'?
Posted by: pn at November 20, 2007 01:20 PMI'm firmly pro-gun but I think it's important to point out that folks that go anti-gun in high-crime urban neighborhoods generally are doing it with the best of intentions, out of a genuine sense of desperation, and out of a reflexive response to the extreme thug culture and prevalence of firearms that pervade their neighborhoods.
The decent people in these areas have a story to tell, and it doesn't deserve to be lumped into the same category as that of a limousine liberal, who have little if any understanding of the power dynamic on the streets and what it is like to live in the thick of it, day by day.
I'm not trying to lecture anyone but I think it's important to recognize that people in very different situations vote similarly with the gun issue in the back of their minds for motivations that sometimes work at cross-purposes for the public good.
I've known very positive, proactive individuals in these communities who supported gun buy-back programs with the best of intentions, and I believe the fact that these programs have failed takes absolutely nothing from the credit their community activism, and their bravery and willingness to do SOMETHING to confront the violence in their neighborhoods, deserve.
Posted by: hashfanatic at November 20, 2007 11:38 PMSo clearly the answer is the lift the ban and watch the guns disappear! That infomercial practically writes itself.
Posted by: Not Dawn Summers at November 21, 2007 12:00 AMOh, the guns will never disappear.
The question is whether the good guys get to carry them legally for self-defense or not, which is the wrinkle...where do you draw the line?
The point is that if conditions continue to deterioriate, provisions have to be made for normal everyday people who just want to go about their business, without being reliant on unmotivated cops whose positions are being cut anyway, without getting a rap sheet for their trouble.
Posted by: hashfanatic at November 21, 2007 01:14 AM
