Posts
Why is crime rising in so many American cities? The answer implicates one of the most celebrated antipoverty programs of recent decades.
By Hanna Rosin
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/6872/
Excelent article, worth reading so as to understand what's going on.
FerFAL
.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
1)Several policemen have been shot in Philadelphia, PA by criminals using assault rifles --one was killed in 2008 and another shot recently.
The 7.62x39 round used in the SKS and AK-47 penetrates body armor /car doors and yet the weapons can be configured with folding stocks that are more easy to conceal than rifles with fixed stocks.
See http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20100717_Expert_details_the_powerful_weapon_used_to_kill_Sgt__Liczbinski.html
and
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20100717__Scary__arsenal_found_at_scene_of_Philadelphia_police_officer_s_shooting.html
2) Welcome to America, Ferfal.
The share of national income held by the richest 2 percent of the population has soared from 10 percent in 1980 to 23 percent recently.
While Goldman Sachs bankers divided up $16 Billion in bonuses handed to them from the US Treasury, 8 million Americans lost their jobs last year.
When your national leaders --in both major parties -- are self-serving crooks, the social fabric starts to unravel.
Mel Tappan, who kinda started the survivalist movement's love affair with assault rifles via a series of articles in Guns and Amno magazine back in the 1970s, quoted some lines from a Yeats poem in his 1980 book "Tappan on Survival":
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
PS Police have been shot at three times in last three nights in Philadelphia -- and Philadelphia is not the most violent of US cities.
See http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/crime&id=7560848&rss=rss-wpvi-article-7560848
Temperatures have been in the 90s on the East Coast -- may be making people testy. Especially if they don't have air conditioning.
Wonder what a Great Depression would do.
In Europe such projects existed in the 80s - epic FAIL.
Check http://www.flodder.tv/flodder-englishs.html
for very good, funny and entertaining movies about this subject from 1986 onwards.
A certain class is not shitty because they live in a shitty environement....it is the people themselfs and THEY create that shitty environement, because it is the best they can handle.
Take them from a shank into a palazzo and you will have a palazzo that looks like a shank within a year.
It takes many years of university studies and faith in the gods of socialism to forget even such simple facts of life.....
I read Don Williams' links.
"All of the guns are legal to purchase in Pennsylvania, said Lt. Vincent Testa, head of the firearms investigation unit."
That might seem surprising to non-gun people, but in reality the SKS and AK-47 are relatively weak rifles. Except for the size of the magazine, the (semi-auto versions of the) rifles don't compare favorably to pretty much any hunting rifle.
They are substantially less powerful than the Fal that has been espoused on this blog regularly.
In truth, rifles are effective weapons. It's what makes them useful for hunting and defense. And yes, it means that the bullets go through car doors (so do pistol bullets), wind shields, soft body armor, and people.
The reason that a rifle like the SKS is used by criminals is probably not because it is especially powerful or easy to conceal. It's because it is inexpensive. Any rifle can be cut down and made easy to conceal. If you're going to shoot a cop, I suspect you're not going to sweat at modifying a gun stock.
I think this link is helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjM9fcEzSJ0
Mindset is hard to define-Fernando posted an entry next to this one where he tries to define a "survival mindset" with what he admits is difficulty-but it's everything. Mindset is nearly impossible to change on one's own.
If one is already poor and one lives in a country like USA, Argentina, or Mexico where the elites make tons of money off the poor, one will find it nearly impossible to become un-poor. If one's parents were middle class 30 years ago in such a place, it is likely that you yourself are headed towards poverty. I see more and more white people in the toughest ghettoes, little blonde girls with their hair braided in "black" hairdos.
Argentina proves that white people can be just as barbaric as any other group. Once a group adopts a mindset of barbarism, there is really no limit to how low they can go. Whites in the US are gradually adopting the slum mindsets of nonwhites, and once that process is complete we can say goodbye to civilization. How would you like being ruled by the Chinese? It might not last long, since even China is gradually coming apart.
Once the social fabric unravels, civilization is kaput. Look at Argentina, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Once barbarism and war feel comfortable, there is no incentive to stop fighting. The same thing happened in Europe after the fall of Rome, and the wars lasted for a thousand years, until the invention of firearms forced an end to the hostilities, since a musket was the nuclear bomb of its time, a super-weapon capable of unimaginable annihilation.
Even then, Europe really didn't stop fighting until they had destroyed the continent and reduced their populations to a point where they couldn't regenerate. If there's ever total nuclear war, I expect the same on a global scale. War is the natural mindset of humans because in a world where the only weapons were sticks and stones, it kept the population down. In a world where everybody has an AK and Al Qaeda has nukes, a war mindset means curtains for the planet.
"In Europe such projects existed in the 80s - epic FAIL."
Yes, the US had a similar policies from the early 1960, a TV series 'The Beverly Hillbillies' was a documentary about the futility of such such ideas.
Maldek nails it; Most of the time, poor people are poor because of choices they make (or they're simply stupid. Stupid people do exist, contrary to some belief systems that assert that all poor people are victims of rich people).
I remember about 12 years ago: gun dealer catalogs offered SKS rifles in good condition for $67 each when bought in 3's. Should have bought a warehouse full.
Of course, Don Williams knows that nearly all centerfire rifles can penetrate body armor, car doors, and windows.
While the Atlantic article from 2008 is scary, this one is current and *scarier* to me:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2506292,CST-NWS-graffiti18.article
The U.S. military is training thugs, typical of stupid government tricks. And I just learned that a leader of the Latin Kings street gang lives near me. (ugh!)
There are certainly still bad folks robbing and killing people in the U.S. but the crime rate has been falling for years. I don't know where you folks get your stats.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704113504575264432463469618.html
Check the FBI stats if you like.
Steve
Overall crime rates may be down, or they may not be because often what gets reported as being down is big city crime statistics though it isn't explicitly stated as such.
Where the perception that crime is increasing is that I (and, I assume, others here) have had more direct experiences with crime lately or know more people who have been directly affected by a criminal. In the last few years I have seen much more crime than I had previously in my life. That is where my perception that crime is increasing comes from: the very real truth that I am now more likely to be the victim or witness to a crime that I used to be.
I know (and I assume, others know) that this is anecdotal. However, a mountain of anecdotes is often more convincing than official reports. If I went to sleep the other night to the sound of pistol fire that isn't close, but isn't too far away, I'm not likely to put much stock in a report that says crime is down.
This is nothing new. I lived in Allentown, PA for many years, which is sandwiched between New York City and Philadelphia. When NYC started cleaning itself up in the 1990s and kicking out the trash, the trash moved into nearby Allentown. This gave them easy access to the big cities while allowing them to easily operate in a town with relatively little police presence.
When these towns start cleaning up, the trash will just find somewhere else to menace and it will be someone else's problem.
"Most of the time, poor people are poor because of choices they make"
I don't see how That could be measured.
It seems untrue.
I've been reading about how regulations, and taxes and such smother businesses before they are even born, but I suppose It Is an individual choice to start a business.
It might also be a reason why the attitude of, "why bother trying" is so prevalent.
Are poor people more like a person being held under water against their will by a group expressing good intentions?
History is full of examples like that, today as well, if a person even bothered to look.
I imagine what education the poor do get, is not all that. The Prussian system is worldwide ya know.
The Public School Nightmare
Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/gatto6.1.1.html
Post a Comment