2013 America (and Friends!) Gun Violence Thread No Plows Allowed!

[FNH]

If you are really interested in why the right to bear arms for the purposes of maintaining a well-regulated militia would not guarantee the general public's right to own firearms, John Paul Stevens addresses it in his book "Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution."

He lays out the entire line of SCOTUS precedent on the Second Amendment and how the idea that the Second Amendment was a guaranteed and virtually unqualified right to bear arms only came about recently (which most people would say is the result of NRA lobbying and propaganda).

There is also Ruth Bader Ginsburg's explanation that the need for a well-regulated militia originates from the fact America's government, at the time, did not raise money for a standing army so it relied on lay persons to serve as militia men who owned their own weapons to protect the country. Now that we have an actual army, there is no need for lay persons to own firearms privately.

"The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia [.... Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias. The states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment [....] It's function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own [....] I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So [....] the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete."

And as Zealot pointed out, the Heller decision where Scalia basically created the right to own handguns no matter what was basically Scalia deciding to ignore words that were inconvenient to the holding he wanted (despite the fact the man spent his entire life saying his jurisprudence was about judges reading the flat meaning of the words in front of them)



RGB says this on that subject:

"If the court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that amendment was very important when the nation was new. It gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms, but it was for one purpose only — and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation."

In other words, the Second Amendment does not exist so that people can have military-grade firearms to fight back against their government, it existed so that we would have troops to save the government. That is now a moot point since we have a goddamn army.

That's just what those red coats want you to think. My comments weren't made in a progun context

[Gredival]

That's just what those red coats want you to think. My comments weren't made in a progun context

You questioned what the language meant in the context it was written, and I answered.

[FNH]

You questioned what the language meant in the context it was written, and I answered.

I'm sorry you wasted your time writing that, but I think you read too much into that comment

[BaneTheBrawler]

Kinda mad. I mean yeah you can get something wheel-based like a LAV-25 and those are much easier to make work but taking a cool looking T-55 and slapping on headlights, turn signals, rubber track slips, deactivated cannon, and a back up beeper makes it look rather silly in the end. And that's assuming you get a permit for road allowance. Man I just want to be able to make store runs in style

having seen what tanks do to unsuitable pavement, i'm happy they're not street legal. i don't trust anyone to stick to the pavement that can actually handle them.

[FNH]

having seen what tanks do to unsuitable pavement, i'm happy they're not street legal. i don't trust anyone to stick to the pavement that can actually handle them.

Good thing ferrets are street legal

[Galkaeater]

The right to keep and bear arms does not come from the second amendment you plebs

[Anoat]

Andrews AFB on lockdown after a report of an active shooter.

[Ragnus]

Wondering what the details of this are going to be.

Also, trying to stave off off snarky comments about the military needing more guns to prevent stuff like this.

. . .

Shit.

[BerenTebogo]

The all-clear has been issued at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland after reports of an active shooter were deemed unfounded, the base said Thursday morning. (Published 3 minutes ago)

Unsure of reliability. Local NBC source.

[dasva]

Wondering what the details of this are going to be.

Also, trying to stave off off snarky comments about the military needing more guns to prevent stuff like this.

. . .

Shit.

You aren't allowed to bring weapons on base and military ones are generally locked up in some fashion and issued as needed. So often there are less people carrying on base then pretty much anywhere in Texas.

[Ksandra]

Wondering what the details of this are going to be.

Also, trying to stave off off snarky comments about the military needing more guns to prevent stuff like this.

. . .

Shit.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrews-...ctive-shooter/

On their Twitter feed, JBA also explained that a "no-notice" active shooter drill had been scheduled Thursday morning and that a "misidentification of the security forces emergency services team" caused the reports on the base.

[Ragnus]

Well, that's good.

[Zealot]

I completed my study, but I'm not sure what to do with the data now.

[Ksandra]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ecruiters.html

The FBI wants teachers to inform on 'anti-government' or 'anarchist' students.
In a document titled 'Preventing Violence and Extremism in Schools', the bureau urges faculty members to assess concerning behavior of schoolchildren as they may be 'embracing extremist ideologies'.
They also list a number of indications, such as violent tendencies, which may be a sign they are planning an attack or may want to join a terrorist group.

I am not sure how I feel about this. I think you'll find a lot of idiot teachers reporting the wrong shit. Kids love to be anti-gov conspiracy-loving people as teens, which is not what the FBI is looking for.

With that said, I personally know those in my family who were raised as the Orlando kid was raised. Not Islamic, but that idea of cultural isolation. Many kids are born and raised in America with the idea that they aren't really Americans, but X countrymen who just so happen to live in America. Compound that was religious extremism and you've got a ticking timebomb.

However, innocent until proven guilty is an important thing to uphold. And I don't like the wording of the article about interventions n' such. idk, I guess it really depends on how the FBI actually handles these cases.

[Mertron]

i can't wait to read that to my students then laugh with them

[BerenTebogo]

i can't wait to read that to my students then laugh with them

This is the right reaction. When I was a wee boy I, like many others, even read Ayn Rand. Thankfully I grew up and learned better. Would hate to be on an FBI watchlist of "people who read shitty books".

[Zealot]

I see no way turning educators into informants could result in making students dislike America.

[dasva]

Afraid kids aren't liking their government enough? Clearly the way to fix that is for the government to have their teachers spy on them. There's no way that wont make them feel even more justified right?

[Zealot]

The results of my gun control study (still looking for a place to present this, but I figure I may as well put it here, too). I can't put footnotes in here, so all my sources are listed at the bottom.

Part One:

Spoiler: show

Current Supreme Court jurisprudence on the Second Amendment was established by District of Columbia v. Heller: Barring any individual regulation in place by states (such as against convicted felons and those with mental impairment) any American citizen can own a handgun, as well as certain kinds of rifle or shotgun. States can regulate their sale, but outright bans are unconstitutional. Heller also established that other firearm bans on less conventional arms (such as machine guns) are still upheld. Keeping that in mind, we examine gun control measures and their effectiveness in controlling violence.

“Gun control laws don’t work. Look at Chicago.”

This statement is often made about the Windy City due to its ban on handgun ownership. However, this has been at least partially inaccurate since 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled on McDonald v. City of Chicago. The 5-4 decision in McDonald held that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Second Amendment as against the States, and therefore all States were now held to the same jurisprudence the Court established in District of Columbia v. Heller. Handguns have therefore been legal in Chicago since 2010.

In 2015, The Washington Post examined the claim that Chicago has a disproportionate rate of gun violence. What the study found was that the seemingly high shooting rate in Chicago is very much skewed by the city’s relatively high population. Looking at homicide data from before the handgun ban was lifted as opposed to after, statistics show that the actual homicide rate has remained relatively static in Chicago (topping out at 500 in 2012, or 18.5 per 100,000, averaging around 430, or 15/100,000) since 2010. This is actually lower than it was in 2002 and 2003, which saw an average of 649 murders, or 22.5/100,000, while the handgun ban was still in place.

Another report from the CDC shows Chicago with 1,152 murders specifically via gunshot from 2006-2007, and 1,139 from 2009-2010. This is second only to Los Angeles for that time period. This was before McDonald was decided and while the handgun ban was still in place.

The evidence does seem to indicate strict gun laws did nothing to prevent the highest numbers of gun violence. However, Los Angeles being first in ranking during those years begs the question of why those specific areas.

Consider this - a block-by-block breakdown of income in Chicago highlights that the poorest neighborhood in the city, Austin, contributed 34 of Chicago’s homicides in 2012. Move just a few miles over to Oak Park, a neighborhood with a median income of $65,313, and that number is 1. A site dedicated to tracking Chicago’s crime statistics, shows those numbers are more or less consistent today, with six of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago equaling the homicide deaths in the rest of the city combined.

Part Two:

Spoiler: show

Now let’s look at Los Angeles - statistics show that people living in neighborhoods facing chronic poverty (this study deals with Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods or “CPNs”) had over double the amount of violent crime than the rest of the city.

Furthermore, when extrapolating out for population, despite their high rate of gun violence by city, neither Illinois nor California makes the top 20 of states with the worst gun violence. The shooting deaths are proportionally lower than the national average. It is only areas with high rates of concentrated and chronic poverty that suffer from rampant gun deaths. When looking at violent crime as a whole and factoring in population density, Illinois only has one county on the list of the top 30 in the nation, and California has none. The Illinois county is Alexander county, which has a median income of $14,052 per capita.

Moving out to the state level, let us set out four statistical facts:

Hawaii has the lowest rate of shooting deaths (3.2 per 100,000)
California has the toughest gun laws in the nation.
Louisiana has the least restrictive gun laws in the nation.
Alaska has the highest rate of shooting deaths (19.8 per 100,000)

However, we can remove Alaska from this equation. When you examine population. Hawaii has a population of 1.43 million. California, 39.1 million. Louisana, 4.65 million, Alaska, 738,432. Why does Alaska have only half Hawaii’s population, yet 6 times its shooting deaths? Alaska has the highest suicide rate in the nation. When you remove suicide from the numbers of gun deaths, you also remove 79% of the deaths related to gunshots.

It is worth noting that Alaska’s most at-risk demographic for suicide - and the most at-risk in the nation - is native Alaskan men aged 15-24. Alaskan natives are the also and perhaps not coincidentally the poorest demographic in America.

Removing Alaska, Louisiana suddenly occupies two spots - it has the highest shooting deaths (19.3 per 100,000) and the least restrictive gun laws.

Louisiana is home to New Orleans, which ranks third on a list of cities with the most violent crime in the nation (behind Detroit and St. Louis - Chicago and Los Angeles do not appear in the top 10). Louisiana requires a permit to own a handgun, but otherwise no registration, no other regulation for ownership of shotguns or rifles, and a fairly open policy on concealed carry.

Remember, the decisions in Heller and McDonald made it clear that American citizens had a right to own a handgun for lawful purposes, but also upheld the right of states to ban certain kinds of rifles and shotguns. FBI Statistics from 2013 show that handguns were used in almost half of all homicides across the country that year - more than every other kind of firearm and knife combined. Of course, handguns are easy to carry, use, and conceal, so this is hardly surprising, but our right to own them is guaranteed by the Second Amendment under Supreme Court jurisprudence. So there’s not much we can do to curtail the prevalence of handguns except attempt regulation at the state level. Louisiana has opted not to. Their gun ownership rate is among the highest in the nation (46% of Louisiana citizens own a firearm. This is enough to place it high above the national average, but still only 10th in the nation for gun ownership, with Wyoming staggeringly in the lead ), and it would seem that this correlates to the highest rate of shooting deaths in the country.

However, Vermont is in a sense even less restrictive than Louisiana - Vermont essentially has no gun laws whatsoever, but lacks some of Louisiana’s pro-gun laws such as the Castle Doctrine. Adjusting for population (Vermont, with a population of 626,562, is sparser than Alaska, but also has 1/69th the area in terms of square miles, so we can assume a higher actual population density) Vermont has roughly 10 deaths per 100,000 from guns a year, half that of Louisiana. Vermont still has gun problems - a noted high rate of suicide using firearms as well as domestic violence - but it would seem that Vermont’s gun laws - or lack thereof - make it a safer place overall.

Three factors should be considered before stating decisively that Vermont provides a haven for gun ownership: education, wealth, and gun ownership rates. Vermont is eighth in the nation for education, and 20th for average household income, with a 12.2% poverty rate. Louisiana, on the other hand, is 46th in education, and 44th in average household income. Finally, despite its lax gun laws, Vermont ranks 43rd on the list of states with the highest gun ownership - only 6.4 guns per 1,000 people, as compared to Louisiana’s 15.1.

Part Three

Spoiler: show

As referenced earlier, Wyoming is #1 in gun ownership by an enormous margin (two and a half times the rate of gun ownership by the next runner-up, Washington D.C.) . Wyoming ranks above Vermont in terms of median household income (18th in the nation, with an 11.2% poverty rate and an average of $57.055 per household) and 37th in the nation in terms of education, far below Vermont but above Louisiana. That being said, Wyoming’s education rating is due to its college graduation rate being below the national average - its number of citizens with a high school diploma is the second highest in the country. Due to its unique economy, a significant portion of its population doesn’t require a college degree for steady employment in a well-paying field. Only four states have poverty rates lower than Wyoming.

What are the gun crime rates in Wyoming? It ranks 6th overall in terms of gun deaths per 100,000 citizens, but bear in mind this is from the state that has nearly three times as many guns per 1,000 people as the next closest state (or District, as the case may be). Wyoming’s gun laws are also comparable to Louisiana.

But take a look at those numbers again, this time focusing only on homicides. If you remove suicides from the numbers, Wyoming suddenly becomes one of the safest spots in the country. Without suicides, Wyoming has roughly 4.7 murders by gun for every 100,000 people.

Is population density a factor? It’s certainly possible, as Wyoming is second only to Alaska in terms of distance between people. However, the District of Columbia is ranked first (as of the 2010 census) and New Jersey second, with Louisiana in 26th. Both areas are far below Louisiana in terms of gun violence - New Jersey in particular is 46th in terms of gun death rates nationwide.

Now let’s go back to the city level and look at those most impoverished areas of Chicago and Los Angeles.

West Garfield Park is one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. There have been 19 homicides in this area alone in the past year, the vast majority of which were done using handguns. The average per capita income in West Garfield Park is $10,951. The unemployment rate is 25%. 26.2% of its residents lack a high school diploma. 40.3% of households live underneath the poverty line.

Chesterfield Square is Los Angeles’s most violent neighborhood. The average median household income was $37,387, low for the county and the nation (not the worst neighborhood in Los Angeles, however - that goes to Downtown with just $15,003 per household ). Only 6% of Chesterfield Square’s residents hold a college diploma, and 1,337 residents over the age of 25 (the neighborhood’s entire population is just over 6,000) do not have even a high school education.

Part Four

Spoiler: show

Now let’s shift focus to places with more rigid stances on gun control. California is noted for having the toughest gun laws in the nation. California’s gun laws began being enacted in the early 1990s, and since that time the number of homicides has fallen by over half. This includes Los Angeles, where in 1993, there were 2,589 homicides in the city alone blamed on the proliferation of guns. Those numbers indicate that California’s crackdown on guns through legislation succeeded in curtailing violence.

Or maybe not - because those numbers are completely in line with the same decrease in gun violence taking place nationwide during the same period. According to the Pew Research Center, there are any number of factors that could have led to the decline in violence from 1993 to today. It is possible that all the reasons in the study played a cumulative part.

In Hawaii, the state with the least amount of gun violence, gun laws are on the cutting edge of tough state regulations. Beginning in 1981, Hawaii passed a mandatory 10-day waiting period for the purchase of any firearm. Firearm ownership in Hawaii also requires registering with the state, having your fingerprints and photograph taken, and the related costs, paperwork, and waiting period. A case study done of violence in Hawaii demonstrates that the average rate of gun violence in the state was similar to other states in the western region of the country - until a sudden sharp drop after 1981.

Was the passage of this and other subsequent gun control laws the reason for Hawaii’s decline in gun violence? Before addressing that point, checking with the other numbers we find that Hawaii is 5th in terms of highest median income nationwide. In terms of education, Hawaii comes in 16th, with 31% of adults holding a college degree and 91.7% of adults with at least a high school education. For comparison, Massachusetts is often ranked just above or just below Hawaii in terms of safety from gun violence. Massachusetts falls just below Hawaii in median income, placing 6th with an average of $69,160 and an only marginally higher poverty rate. Massachusetts is also 1st in the nation when it comes to education.

As the earlier case study also points out, Hawaii has several unique factors - including natural barriers making importing guns in circumvention of Hawaiian law far more difficult than in other states, and Hawaii was also not caught up in the crack-cocaine epidemic striking other western states during the 1980s. In short, while there does appear to be a correlation between Hawaii’s drop-off in violence and their passage of tougher gun restrictions, there is not enough data to say so conclusively. Furthermore, Hawaii’s geography makes it unique amongst the rest of the United States, meaning gun control measures which may be effective there would not necessarily translate to the rest of the nation.

Conclusion

Spoiler: show

In conclusion - there is no meaningful conclusion. The sheer number of factors for which cannot be accounted for in traditional studies of gun violence casts doubt on any study that attempts to directly tie gun control efforts to a reduction in deaths. States with a lack of gun control such as Vermont and Wyoming enjoy comparable levels of safety to those with strict measures in place, as with Hawaii and California.

The one thing that can be said with confidence is that regardless of gun control measures, the level of poverty and education in any given area directly correlate to levels of gun violence. Baltimore is in the state with the highest median income of all, Maryland, but has some of the worst poverty levels in the nation within the city - nearly a quarter of Baltimore city residents live below the poverty line, and 20% lack even a high school education. Baltimore is also among the deadliest cities in America, and 90% of its killings are done by firearm. If cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles highlight anything, it is that the overall level of access to education and job opportunities providing meaningful income has more of an effect on gun violence than any other metric we have recorded statistics for. Illinois, Maryland, and California are all amongst the least violent states in the country, and employ strict gun control measures, but they contain within them pockets of concentrated poverty that they have yet to address. These areas remain deadly despite all efforts to curb violence through gun regulation.

Wyoming provides the counterpoint; provide a populace with steady employment and education, and the number of guns available or restrictions on becomes far less of a concern.

This is far from a scientific study, merely an aggregate of statistics accumulated from other sources. No meaningful long-term study of gun violence or its possible mitigating factors has been performed in this country, in no small part thanks to extreme government resistance to the idea. The ATF has a restriction upon its funding prohibiting any part of its operating budget to be used to conduct studies into gun violence. The CDC and Census Bureau can publish raw numbers, but may not draw conclusions. That being said, we may find answers as a nation to the issue gun violence if we view it as an outgrowth of the root problem of concentrated and chronic poverty, and seek to address curing that instead.

Sources

Spoiler: show

1. 554 US 570 (2008)
2. 561 US 742 (2010)
3. Philip Bump, Gun-Control Opponents Love to Cite Chicago. So How Does it Compare to the Rest of America? Washington Post, Oct. 5, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...st-of-america/
4. Crime Rate in Chicago, Illinois, http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime...-Illinois.html
5. Id.
6. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Firearm Homicides and Suicides in Major Metropolitan Areas - United States 2006-2007 and 2009-2010, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 62, No. 30, Aug. 2, 2013. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm6230.pdf
7. Zoe Galland, How Rich is Your Neighborhood? Crain’s Chicago Business, Jan. 8, 2013. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...r-neighborhood
8. Id.
9. http://heyjackass.com/category/2016-stats/
10. Michael Matsunaga, Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Economic Roundtable, http://www.lachamber.com/clientuploa...tedPoverty.pdf
11. CBS News, Death by Gun: Top 20 States With Highest Rates, http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/deat...highest-rates/
12. FBI, 2014 Crime in the United States https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc...-in-the-u-s%2F
13. United States Census Bureau, Quickfacts: Alexander County, Illionis, http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/17003
14. U.S. Population by State, 1790-2015, http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004986.html
15. Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics, Alaska Suicide Facts and Statistics, http://dhss.alaska.gov/SuicidePreven...Statistics.pdf
16. Egan Millard, Alaska: Gun Death Capital of the U.S., Alaska Dispatch News, Mar. 10, 2016, Updated May 31, 2016, http://www.adn.com/health/article/al...ic/2016/03/11/
17. Detroit, Michigan is the most violent city in America and St. Louis City, Missouri is the most dangerous county. However, for the purposes of this study I am examining only deaths via gun violence.
18. Macartney, Suzanne, Bishaw, Alemayehu, and Fontenot, Kayla “Poverty Rates for Selected Detailed Race and Hispanic Groups by State and Place: 2007–2011” U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf
19. Mason Johnson, FBI’s Violent Crime Statistics for Every City in America, CBS Chicago, Oct. 22, 2015 http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/10/...ty-in-america/
20. NRA-ILA, Louisiana Gun Laws https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/stat...aws/louisiana/
21. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States 2013 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc...eapon_2013.xls
22. Emily Lane, Louisiana Leads Nation in Gun Deaths; Website Correlates Deaths with Lax Laws, High Gun Ownership, The Times-Picayune, June 18, 2014, updated July 15, 2014 http://www.nola.com/politics/index.s...na_deaths.html
23. Elizabeth Parker, The Top 10 Most Heavily-Armed States in America (Is Yours on the List?), Reverb Press, Dec. 14, 2015 http://reverbpress.com/politics/fire...pita-by-state/
24. NRA-ILA, Vermont Gun Laws https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/state-gun-laws/vermont/
25. Number of Deaths Due to Injury by Firearm per 100,000 Population, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation http://kff.org/other/state-indicator...e-per-100000//
26. Gun Sense Vermont, Does Vermont Have a Gun Problem? http://www.gunsensevt.org/does_vermo..._a_gun_problem
27. Kevin Mahnkan, New Data Adds Another Strike Against Vermont’s Reputation as a Gun-Filled, Violence-Free Oasis, The Trace, Sept. 17, 2015 https://www.thetrace.org/2015/09/ver...de-gun-deaths/
28. Thomas C. Frohlich, Michael B. Sauter, Evan Comen and Samuel Stebbins, America’s Most and Least Educated States: A Survey of All 50, 24/7 Wall Street, Sept. 23, 2015 http://247wallst.com/special-report/...ated-states/3/
29. Id. at http://247wallst.com/special-report/...ted-states/11/
30. Dora Mekouar, These Are America’s Richest & Poorest States, Voice of America, Sept. 21, 2015 http://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-a...oorest-states/
31. See The Top 10 Most Heavily-Armed States in America (Is Yours on the List?), supra
32. See Id.
33. See America’s Most and Least Educated States: A Survey of All 50, at http://247wallst.com/special-report/...ated-states/9/
34. Bishaw, Alemayehu, “Poverty: 2000 to 2012,” U.S. Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-01.pdf
35. See Number of Deaths Due to Injury by Firearm per 100,000 Population, supra.
36. NRA-ILA, Wyoming Gun Laws https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/state-gun-laws/wyoming/
37. Lori Robertson, Gun Laws, Deaths, and Crime, FactCheck.org, Oct. 4, 2015 http://www.factcheck.org/2015/10/gun...hs-and-crimes/
38. U.S. Census Bureau, Resident Population Data http://www.census.gov/2010census/dat...-dens-text.php
39. See Id.
40. Leslie Salzillo, New Study Ranks 50 States By Gun Sense And Gun Deaths -- Gun Extremists Arrive in 5-4-3-2-1, Daily Kos, Jun. 20, 2014 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/0...iolence-Deaths
41. Chicago Tribune, Crime in Chicagoland http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chic...-garfield-park
42. Id.
43. Los Angeles Times, Chesterfield Square http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhood...rfield-square/
44. Los Angeles Times, Downtown http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhood...hood/downtown/
45. See Chesterfield Square, supra.
46. FindLaw, California Gun Control Laws, http://statelaws.findlaw.com/califor...trol-laws.html
47. Frank Smyth, California: Did Tough Gun Control Laws Cut Firearm Deaths?, MSNBC, Aug. 7, 2013, updated Sept. 13, 2013 http://www.msnbc.com/all/california-...ntrol-laws-cut
48. Shawn Hubler, Homicides in 1992 Set Record for L.A. County : Violence: 2,589 Killings in 1992 Represent an 8% Rise Over Previous Year. Cultural Changes and Accessibility of Guns Cited as Factors, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 5, 1993 http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-...angeles-county
49. Cohn, D’Vera, Taylor, Paul, Hugo Lopez, Mark, Gallagher, Catherine A., Parker, Kim and Maass, Kevin T., “Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware,” Pew Research Center, May 7, 2013 http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/...ublic-unaware/
50. Nicole Orttung, Hawaii Gun-Owner Law Joins State-by-State Trend, Christian Science Monitor, June 26, 2016, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Upd...islation-trend
51. Peters, Joseph A.; Cook, Philip J.; and Ludwig, Jens "Gun Crime and Gun Control: The Hawaiian Experience," University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 2005: Iss. 1, Article 3, http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol2005/iss1/3
52. See These Are America’s Richest & Poorest States, supra
53. See America’s Most and Least Educated States: A Survey of All 50, supra
54. See These Are America’s Richest & Poorest States, supra
55. See America’s Most and Least Educated States: A Survey of All 50, supra
56. See Gun Crime and Gun Control: The Hawaiian Experience, supra.
57. See Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware, supra.
58. U.S. Census Bureau, Baltimore, Maryland http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/tab...04000,24005,00
59. Kevin Rector, Deadliest Year in Baltimore History Ends with 344 Homicides, The Baltimore Sun, Jan. 1, 2016 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/mar...101-story.html

[Gokku]

so... gun control doesnt matter , decent schools do? WELP AMERICAS FUCKED

really you think people are going to invest in the poor? in our country? LooooooooooooL

(i should state that ive been arguing for years that education improvements in america are the #1 way to fix alot of issues from substance abuse , poverty , violence and racial inequality . i however don't think anything will happen moarly because to do so isnt "cheap or rewarding" as long as the current form of CAPITALISM HOOOOO is in effect in "murica".)

However if we have a common enemy alot of this would go out the window ala Gundam 00