> Rational deliberation and cold calculation may be relevant for property crimes, he argues, but violence results from decisions that are far more impulsive and spontaneous
After watching about 100 hours of various body cam footage on YouTube, I totally agree. In so many cases the interaction with police escalates absolutely spontaneously, without any sort of clear intent to escalate from either side.
giantg2 · 17h ago
"There are more guns in America than people, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. But this doesn’t mean that gun violence lies outside the scope of feasible public policy initiatives."
The problem is, nobody is really supporting those other initiatives either. For decades we have seen interventions like Operation Ceasefire in Boston produce dramatic results. Someone had to fund it, but very few want to. Everytown for Gun Safety doesn't seem to contribute to these programs from what I see on the website. Likewise, the Bill Gates supports various charities and donates millions to support gun laws, yet I'm not aware of any work done on funding these initiatives that show empirical evidence of working.
vorpalhex · 16h ago
Nobody actually wants to fix crime.
We know there are a bunch of interventions with meaningful impacts on the crime rate. This ranges from actually keeping repeat offenders in jail to making preschool freely available.
Nobody does them. It isn't cost, there doesn't seem to generally be an ethical outcry, etc.
Just nobody actually wants to address the problem. They instead want to leverage crime to achieve some other goal. Actually fixing crime harms the ability to use crime to achieve other ends.
> in low income neighborhoods, shootings go down by something like thirty percent in the vicinity of those scary vacant lots turned into pocket parks compared to similarly scary places that weren't fixed up
> the importance of foot patrol as a source of paid eyes on the street…this role may be played by “agencies other than the police.”
Has anyone studied construction sites? If we have a crew of workers, non-police “paid eyes on the street” for several months while they’re redoing a road, and this idea works, then would we see lower crime rates temporarily while the construction job is active?
soufron · 16h ago
Well, being a "pathological pragmatist" one could have thought that he would advocate to lower gun violence by getting rid of the guns, rather than trying to demonstrate that people who live in nice and clean places are magically less violent.
So... meh.
reliabilityguy · 16h ago
Switzerland is packed with guns to the brim. Gun violence there doesn’t exist.
Why?
slater · 16h ago
Because they usually don't get to keep the ammo at home.
And if they do, there are strict rules about counting it when taking home, and when bringing it back to e.g. annual shooting contests, etc.
Source: Spent my first 30 years in CH.
brohee · 5h ago
The ammo thing is for the service rifle. Switzerland also has a very high private ownership level at least compared to the rest of Europe, and by they can keep ammunition at home (but secured, like the weapons).
After watching about 100 hours of various body cam footage on YouTube, I totally agree. In so many cases the interaction with police escalates absolutely spontaneously, without any sort of clear intent to escalate from either side.
The problem is, nobody is really supporting those other initiatives either. For decades we have seen interventions like Operation Ceasefire in Boston produce dramatic results. Someone had to fund it, but very few want to. Everytown for Gun Safety doesn't seem to contribute to these programs from what I see on the website. Likewise, the Bill Gates supports various charities and donates millions to support gun laws, yet I'm not aware of any work done on funding these initiatives that show empirical evidence of working.
We know there are a bunch of interventions with meaningful impacts on the crime rate. This ranges from actually keeping repeat offenders in jail to making preschool freely available.
Nobody does them. It isn't cost, there doesn't seem to generally be an ethical outcry, etc.
Just nobody actually wants to address the problem. They instead want to leverage crime to achieve some other goal. Actually fixing crime harms the ability to use crime to achieve other ends.
So it goes.
> the importance of foot patrol as a source of paid eyes on the street…this role may be played by “agencies other than the police.”
Has anyone studied construction sites? If we have a crew of workers, non-police “paid eyes on the street” for several months while they’re redoing a road, and this idea works, then would we see lower crime rates temporarily while the construction job is active?
So... meh.
Why?
And if they do, there are strict rules about counting it when taking home, and when bringing it back to e.g. annual shooting contests, etc.
Source: Spent my first 30 years in CH.