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NYC Shooting Map, c Kevin L'Herrou

I’ll let you form your own opinions, but note that the black markers are fatal shootings and the blue ones are just punctures. All I’m going to say is that maybe the problem isn’t law enforcement or a lack of gun control, maybe the problem is…economic? Map by Kevin L’Herrou, from Reddit.

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92 COMMENTS

  1. It’s no surprise that the poorest areas of NYC are also the most crime-ridden. Poverty breeds desperation. Desperation breeds crime.

    As for WHY they’re poor…there are probably a thousand reasons for that, most of which are likely to start an intense flamewar if I bring any of them up.

    • Under normal circumstances poverty breeds hard work. But our national policy for the last 50 years has been to keep people comfortable in their poverty which saps the ambition out of people. You now have second and third generations of people who have grown up having never once seen a parent get up in the morning and go to work. Why go out and sweat in the heat when you can hang out in the air conditioning all day playing X-box?

      So what do you do when you turn 18 and the government checks stop? You slacked off in school and will never get into a decent college. You’re choices are McDonalds or selling drugs on the street corner. Since the government prohibition on drugs means you can’t call the cops if someone comes and steals your money you carry a(n illegal) gun in your pants. Someone messes with you you shoot and run, odds are the cops won’t catch you because it’s just another punk being shot by another punk – they really don’t care that much.

      That said there will always be people who refuse to live by societies rules and won’t respect the rights of others. They don’t tend to do well economically, so there will always be poor areas with high crime rates. We’re just making it worse than it needs to be.

      • Whole lotta truth in that posting.

        50 years ago many black people were under the yoke of segregation in some areas of the country yet they had a ton of self respect and American values that were inculcated in black churches. At the same time the leftists started growing the “entitlement state” they were also undermining the church. Well they met their goals of having a whole group of people dependent on them. Yoohoo…you won…oh wait a minute….

        • I heard once that in the late ’40s young black males had a higher rate of employment than young white males.

          Work ethic is not an innate quality in humans, it is learned behavior. My dad would have you believe he learned it when he was 4 years old milking cows, I learned it when I was 19, some people don’t ever learn it.

        • @Gov. William J. Le Petomane

          Yes, that was true and it was also bolstered by WWII where every resource was used to help support the War effort and then reconstruction.

          The concept of entitlement does not just harm Blacks.

          We have a whole generation of college kids with that same entitlement ethos. Even the military has a huge problem breaking down many young recruits. There are parents that actually go with their kids to job interviews. As someone who has to hire new college grads for my company from time to time, I often have to restrain myself from throwing some of them out the window. Thankfully they seem in the minority but some of the ones I have met have made my jaw drop as to what they believe they are entitled to before they even have one day of experience.

          What is worse, is once it becomes ingrained and generational, it is almost impossible to break the cycle. It almost becomes part of their DNA.

    • Well, I can’t speak for all of those dots that lay inside the “$50K and above” areas, but I do recognize a few of those places in Queens. Several of them are in the vicinity of apartment complexes (frequelty refered to as “The Projects”) that were built in the 50’s through 70’s with the stated intent of putting poor people in middle class areas in order to “raise them up” economically. Needless to say, it didn’t work very well. I see 6 clusters of shootings on that map in the working class areas where they coinside with a Project complex. It’s not very PC, but everyone that lives near a Project in NYC would generally tell you the same thing.

    • The economic distribution, while not a surprise, reminded me of an interesting point. No matter how poor or “economically disadvantaged” folks ALWAYS seem to find money for cigarettes, booze, drugs, and a GUN.

      • Irony ON

        “… that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. …”
        Life = a gun for self defense
        The pursuit of happiness = cigarettes, booze, drugs

        Irony OFF

  2. Complex problems are always multi-faceted. The simple-minded and the politically blinded would like there to be one simple legislative or regulatory answer to each individual problem. The understanding that problems can’t be explained or fixed in political sound bytes requires a bit more research and effort on the part of the individual. Only then can a problem be understood to the point of being able to hypothesize a possible solution using critical thinking skills… but that is generally discouraged today because we can’t have people thinking for themselves, can we…

    • The solutions government imposes are most often worse than the problem. Obamacare anyone?

      The real solution is to return to a constitutional republic where people are free to rise as high as they can on their own merits and hard work. Yes, a social safety net for those who fall, but as limited in scope as possible.

      In my work, I have spent a lot of time in the poorest neighborhoods of cities all over the nation, from the South Bronx to Houston, to Detroit, to the Tenderloin in San Francisco.

      It strikes me as odd how all of the “poor” people have cell phones. It strikes me as odd how many of them have large screen plasma TVs in their often very nice apartments. It strikes me as odd how many of the kids being fed at an after school program drink half their milk, eat their potato chips, then throw the rest of their meal out. It would shock you to see that maybe 80% of the food being prepared for them at taxpayer expense is wasted.

      If we continue to create policies that make not working an attractive option for people, then how can we expect them to work? If the government declares that it will take care of every one, then why should anyone take care of themselves?

      This is the root of the problem. Olasky’s “The Tragedy of American Compassion” lays it out in the starkest possible terms.

      The worst thing is, the people being hurt the worst by these misguided programs are the poor themselves who become little more than serfs, scoring their public benefits and keeping the politicians who keep the benefits flowing in office.

      But, to use the lib’s favorite word, it is unsustainable. The system will one day collapse. And when that happens, it will not be pretty.

      • “This is the root of the problem. Olasky’s “The Tragedy of American Compassion” lays it out in the starkest possible terms.”

        Read it this summer, and was going to point out the historical context of the wood chopping stations for work relief.

        Glad you got to it before me!

      • “It strikes me as odd how all of the “poor” people have cell phones. It strikes me as odd how many of them have large screen plasma TVs in their often very nice apartments.”

        Don’t forget the new iPads and xBox Ones.

        “It strikes me as odd how many of the kids being fed at an after school program drink half their milk, eat their potato chips, then throw the rest of their meal out. It would shock you to see that maybe 80% of the food being prepared for them at taxpayer expense is wasted.”

        It wouldn’t shock me at all. I witnessed it.

    • I do not believe politicians are as much blind, but they have no clue WTF to do. Many are not corrupt, but can be easily be corruptible to the point where they just do not give a crap. Since the people who are most impacted, do not seem to have enough self esteem to help themselves, they constantly rely on a system that cannot help them — and so goes the cycle.

  3. The problem is economics, but the driving force is cultural.

    A culture that prizes athletic ability above education, a culture that says it’s just fine for men to knock up a dozen women and move on, a culture that says it’s fine to use and deal drugs, a culture that will not take responsibility for its own failures but seeks instead to blame everything on anybody else — that culture is on a death spiral. Economic disadvantage and crime follow like night follows day.

      • Me too. The culture the media powers and some politicians constantly sell to the poor is not the culture that will raise up the quallity of their lives.

    • When you have leaders like Sharpton and Jackson who constantly preach it is someone else’s fault but yours and other community leaders who do the same, it is hard to escape and see that the answer to your future is starring you right in the mirror and nobody else, no government can help you.

      The only people that Sharpton and Jackson have helped over the years is themselves — and sadly there is a whole community of people who cannot see that. They have created a culture of victims and while they may no longer be shackled in iron chains, they are mentally shackled with no idea how to break free.

      You have thousands of legal and illegal immigrants who come here with few to anything to their name and within several years have a house, a car and often a business but then you have people who are born here who generationally over many years cannot get out of government assistance that should tell you something.

      I believe it was Case-Shiller from Yale who did a study some time ago that said that 40% of new immigrants to the USA will hook up with others of their same country or family and within 5 years purchase their own home and within 10yrs all those who they immigrated or joined together with will all own their own homes. This is more true of Asian cultures but eastern and western Europeans do the same as well. Yet, we have an entire group of people here who cannot do the same over 100years.

      • Keep in mind the poverty rate for two parent black families is very low. While the ghetto exists, it is not where black people live exclusively anymore.

        It used to be house n and everyone else. Now especially in the south you have regular black people, no crime, just like everyone else.

        Problem is, this is what fbi feared with panther breakfast program. You may get a splinter country rather than harmony but it remains to be seen. While I can’t speak for all places, I have met three genuinely racist white people in my life.

        They are all at the same college and program though lol and social workers so racist may be the wrong word. Good job to the average ‘white’ person. Please fight against the media who try to paint you all as hateful, the Sikh nation is with you in this fight.

    • Culture is a response to circumstances. Our grandparents or parents (for some) grew up in the Great Depression and as a result developed a culture of frugality. I’ve come across old diaries/financial records from my grandmother where expenditures, no matter how small, were recorded. Presumably every single penny.

      There is a large subculture in America (and other countries as well) that punishes attempts to embrace education through ostracizing those that try. I think it’s a result of welfare programs that have alleviated the link between action and consequences, made poverty comfortable and punish attempts to leave poverty to boot! MIlton Friedman proposed that welfare be administered as a negative income tax once. The main thing about his plan that struck me was that it would allow the benefits to gradually decrease as a recipient got better and better jobs instead of letting a recipient keep all of the benefits while they had a very low income and then pulling the rug out from under them once their income reached an arbitrary level.

  4. The problem isnt economic.

    The problem is socialism.

    The violence in ethnic neighborhoods is a direct consequence of socialist , neoliberal policies.

    What self respecting man takes a handout check?None. Crime may be a violent and harsh way to earn a living, but it offers something no government check ever will-self respect.

    • ST writes: “The violence in ethnic neighborhoods is a direct consequence of socialist , neoliberal policies.”

      I think you’re confusing two very different economic philosophies, neoliberalism and socialism. Neoliberals seek private/public policy solutions for social problems, and have far greater faith in markets than socialists, which is why Richard Nixon, Freiderich Hayek, Augusto Pinochet and George W. Bush could accurately be described as neoliberals. As to socialism causing violence, then we’d expect more socialist countries to have more violence, right? That requires a lot more variables to be proved true, as there a many European social democracies with far lower crime rates than America (especially the Nordic ones).

      ST writes: “What self respecting man takes a handout check?None.”

      You obviously don’t live in farm country. Agricultural subsidies abound, even for the small farmer. With fluctuations in global prices every advanced democratic go’t subsidizes their agricultural sector. So to with federal transportation and energy bills, which supply corporate America with fat subsidies to make them competitive. Nor do you work in the financial sector, where federal bailouts are not uncommon (from the S&L crisis, to the LTCM fiasco, to TARP). Economic elites know that the government is their secret friend and will bail them out.

      The largest employers in America today are WalMart, McDonalds, and the Yum! restaurant chain (Pizza Hut,KFC, Taco Hell). They don’t pay much above minimum, if that, and you can’t feed a family working on even 10% above minimum wage — not if Mom is home taking care of a baby or two. (50 hour work week: only $400 gross.) That’s why the working poor are relying so much from the government. Manufacturing jobs are more automated and outsourced, lower and middle class wages are frozen or declining . . . who else is going to help a family through? Your post reads as if you’re entirely ignorant of what the government actually provides for its wealthiest citizens and corporations.

      • “… you can’t feed a family working on even 10% above minimum wage — not if Mom is home taking care of a baby or two.” – What about waiting and NOT having family if you cannot support it? And if you do start one, and can’t get better job than minimum wage (no matter why – lack of ambition, education or plain old stupidity) get ready to work much more than 50 hours a week. It is father’s responsibility to take care of his family. Or it should be.

        Father of two.

        • Scoutino: “What about waiting and NOT having family if you cannot support it? . . . It is father’s responsibility to take care of his family. Or it should be.”

          Sometimes life doesn’t work that way, especially if you’re raised an orthodox Christian. Prohibitions on pre-marital sex encourages marrying young, and conservative opposition to birth control (like that of the Catholic Church) means having families young. In contrast, a liberal college education often necessitates a longer delay in both marrying and having kids, and college can’t be available for everyone.

          Also, there’s job loss, especially through downsizing (increased automation) and outsourcing. There’s been a tremendous degree of middle class demobility starting in 2007, and having a family often means a father isn’t as mobile as a bachelor, or he might have a philosophical and ideological reserve in going to, say, a liberal enclave like California for a job. Finally, wage stagnation, being what it is, often requires two incomes to make a family work. Most families in America can’t support themselves on a single income, not unless wages start going up.

      • No solution other than the “balancing of trade accounts” can work, can keep a combination of manufacturing and engineering/research in one country. Warren Buffet’s view. Nations which exceed their exports to a trade partner can fix the balance the following year by favoring domestic consumption. And vice versa.

    • I don’t know if it counts as a “handout check”, but for about three years in college I got a bit ahead of myself financially and ended up on food stamps. I was in a college program (mechanical engineering at one of the best schools in the nation for undergrad engineering) that went through rotations of school and cooperative employment, and at the time I had one child with my wife, who was (and still is) a stay at home mother. Between saving money during work rotations and making up the difference with saavy use of our (overly generous) tax refunds, we were making it work quite well. We really wanted two kids close together, so I looked at our budget and decided it could work.

      Wrong.

      Long story short, we ended up on food stamps for about 2.5 years. It helped us spend more of my co-op money on expenses, and gave me the ability to spend less time worrying about finances and more time making good grades. I graduated magna cum laude and was the student commencement speaker, and now I’m working full time as a mechanical engineer and paying significant taxes back into that system, and we bought a house last year as well. I’m also blessed in that I can give a significant portion of my income to my church and to missions work overseas, so I’m “giving back” to more than just Uncle Sam.

      So my point is that generalizations blot out the fact that these programs DO sometimes lead to success and a net gain for society. I’m a self-respecting man, and I accepted a “handout.” What say you to this?

  5. It’s not poverty, it’s social pathology. Not only does the poverty map sync well with the shootings map, but so does the “households headed by single mothers” map.

    http://takimag.com/article/children_and_guns_the_hidden_dads_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz2mFD3enxU

    The welfare state creates an incentive for people to make bad life choices. This has resulted in 72% of African American households being headed by a single mother, many of them teenagers themselves. The number for Hispanic households is equally grim, at 53%.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39993685/ns/health-womens_health/t/blacks-struggle-percent-unwed-mothers-rate/#.Uptu4eIlgWk

    Children raised in such situations do not experience the stability and discipline of a two parent family and thus these children are more likely to be high school drop outs, criminals, drug addicts, or single parents themselves.

    http://heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/4387.pdf

    This destruction of the traditional, stable family unit has been further accelerated by the toxic culture of thug-worship, drugs, crime, misogyny, and violence. Daniel Moynihan pointed this out in the 1960s. He was right then, he’s even more right now.

    As with so many government initiatives, the welfare state has had huge unintended consequences. The main victims of those consequences have been the very people the programs ostensibly set out to help.

  6. I love this map because it shows the problem pretty clearly. same story, every city. Used to be, an outlet for “unskilled labor” was a job in the factory or steel mill. Now that we have moved those jobs to China and Mexico, the outlet is drugs and crime. Drugs, unemployment, and welfare, pay more than a real job. We cannot all be 180 IQ tech geniuses. leftist labor policies and the drug war are pretty toxic.

    • dwb: ” Used to be, an outlet for “unskilled labor” was a job in the factory or steel mill. Now that we have moved those jobs to China and Mexico, the outlet is drugs and crime. Drugs, unemployment, and welfare, pay more than a real job. We cannot all be 180 IQ tech geniuses. leftist labor policies and the drug war are pretty toxic.”

      Yeah, outsourcing means that the largest employers in America are now minimum wage service jobs — but that’s not a uniquely leftist labor policy. The GOP and many laissez-faire conservatives have long promoted “globalization,” especially as a way to undercut unions. Americans can’t live on what Asian factory workers make, and if you’re a factory owner who wants to be globally competitive, you want to keep wages down for higher profits. So what does that mean for impoverished rural areas and inner cities?

      • “Americans can’t live on what Asian factory workers make, and if you’re a factory owner who wants to be globally competitive, you want to keep wages down for higher profits.”

        Less than 15% of the cost of the product you buy is the value of foreign factory workers. The rest is the cost of real estate, the store clerks who ring you up, transportation, health care, taxes, and so on – all done by US workers. In other words, most of what US workers spend money on is produced by other US workers.

        If US workers have a hard time affording goods and services, its not because of foreign competition, its because leftist labor (and tax and environmental) policies have made it too expensive. Here is an example: about 40% of people’s budget is housing. Housing in the city is “expensive” yet I can drive through large swaths of Queens or Baltimore that are boarded up. Moreover, I know that 700k homes are being built 10 miles away. Why does it make sense to leave buildings to decay, infested with drug dealers, but build 700k homes not too far away? Taxes in the city are high because the city supports underfunded union pensions – money that goes to close the structural deficit does not go to services. Who wants to move into a city with poor services? City union labor is just too expensive. Even though the actual cost to renovate those structures might be a mere fraction of the cost of new housing, taxes *due to expensive union labor) and regulations push people out of the city.

        About 2/3 of Detroit’s housing is vacant. Bankruptcy, if the city manager ends up with a decent plan, means lower cost of services, lower taxes, and means that it will make sense to tear down buildings and build “affordable” housing.

      • No, it isn’t the right or the left that has jobs moving to Mexico and China. It is the consumer that accepts and even demands those cheaply made goods. The consumer needs to understand that when they save a buck on Chinese made goods, their taxes are going to go up to support the unemployed at home. Wanting to by cheap crap from Wally World and then being outraged at the low wages and lack of benefits at Wally World is lunacy.

    • this is incredibly obvious but NOBODY will touch the elephant in the room that is our trade agreements with China. they MUST end or there is no other way to bring jobs back to the US. there is no amount of governmental meddling that will bring back living-wage jobs for laborers. the only thing we can do is end NAFTA and stop importing Chinese manufactured goods, or at least put tariffs in place that make it financially preferable to manufacture goods here in the US.

      • Jeff: “the only thing we can do is end NAFTA and stop importing Chinese manufactured goods, or at least put tariffs in place that make it financially preferable to manufacture goods here in the US.”

        You may be right, but that means abandoning the free market and stopping manufacturers who want to take jobs overseas. That will require curbing corporate influence and a massive government intervention. And let’s not forget how tariffs imposed by the Smoot-Hawley Act exacerbated the Great Depression by locking up global trade.

        • Or we can do what the Chinese do in their own markets.

          If you want to sell here, you must manufacture here.

          Instead of a tariff war that eventually hurts all, require companies that want to sell into the US market to produce a percentage of those items domestically.

          Do you really think that Samsung or Apple will give up the US market if we ask them to make 30% of the items they sell here with domestic factories?

          -ted

      • The US (and European) economy was already heavily globalized in 1927. It isn’t a new phenomenon, though people assume it is. What differed was the relative power of prosperous nations and the importance of infrastructure, which made domestic manufacturing economic.

        As banks and corporations became more international, they increasingly fought the need to reciprocate the advantages their national ‘host’ provided.

        Today we see the logical next step in that corporate ‘otherness.’ Corporations, the Senate, support Obamacare as a means to offload costs, healthcare costs. Americans have been quietly been trained to accept the notion of part-time work as ’employment’, so that more people can remain “employed,” though poor, thus keeping the peace. The left is demanding healthcare for the part timers paid for by the full timers, not by the corporation income taxes. That is the compromise. The left insists a marginal worker get full joint replacements, coronary bypass operations, very expensive medicine. The right says “OK, but only if most of the cost falls on the average individual taxpayer, not the corporate income tax. Investors are guaranteed continued profitability of their investments. The left gets happy voters.

        That is what the deal is. That is why the Senate, an overall conservative institution, created and approved it. That is why you don’t hear corporate CEOs complaining about it. The US ‘middle class’ gave up reading, thinking, and inferring long ago. And boy does it show.

        • yes, globalization existed in the earlier parts of the 20th century, and yet most countries still were well-balanced with regards to having an equal share of both production and consumption economies. today, the production economies have been basically offloaded entirely into third-world countries. the goal was to temporarily maximize profits for those in control of these production economies. we are reaching the point now where the temporary nature of this arrangement is beginning to show, and can only last for so much longer, as the consumer economies are now without gainful employment and are reaching the point where they can no longer afford to buy these goods.

          globalization is a concept best left in limited quantities, or else this is what happens when gloablists are left to run amok, and gain influence not only in business but in government, leading to “one world” applications of governmental policy and law – there is a certain amount of truth to those who claim that a “new world order” is desired by globalists.

          I would also argue that it can be very damaging to a nation’s economy and self-reliance when “the free market” extends outside of said nation’s borders.

          I’m not an economics major by any stretch of the imagination, but these are the things that seem obvious to me, though I could very well be wrong in my assumptions.

        • I actually think Warren Buffett’s trade solution was the best idea. He said we should be requiring equality of buying between nations, within some range of variance. He went public with the idea. The left democrats didn’t jump on it, just as they don’t jump on the idea that mass immigration undercuts ghetto wages, which is an absurdity. Corporations prefer free globalizing. Small employers prefer less globalizing but more immigration. The Republican party is a mix of those two.

          Good solutions are often posed by rather rich people. I think it is often a sort of experiment: “Are those guys even paying attention?” Buffett may ask. “Well, obviously they aren’t, so it’s on them!”

  7. Contrary to liberal cant, crime causes poverty not the other way around. There are still a lot of places in this country inhabited by poor people that aren’t crime invested beyond a little drunk and disorderly. Crime drives out people who work. It gets into the schools and prevents those who want an education from getting one. It keeps honest people off the streets and local commerce dries up. This is all by design. If the black community, and let’s not talk around the ethnicity, ever figures out it is the white liberal politician, working through his black lacky, is working to keep him poor and down then the Democratic Party is SOL. Not even the dimwitted “I am all for Obamacare but I didn’t think I would have to pay for it” Millenials won’t be able to salvage things for the Party.

    Many of you think that the average gangbanger makes more than minimum wage. He doesn’t. He may be selling drugs on the street corner but they are not his drugs. If he has his own franchise then he has costs. The only people getting rich are the gang leaders, not the troops.

    • Please keep posting, I’ve never someone say it like that before but I agree. Personally though it is obvious that stood role is the only way forward for any community though. What if the panthers were around. However I would love to hear your views on this as you expose my ignorance which is very refreshing.

      Just figure that if white America traditionally used military rule against the black nation there should be a military response. This is because in any two tribe society one always dominates. However I am not black nor white and only 20. Here for education though. Thanks,

      ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਹਿ

      • I am from a worse part of town myself but in Toronto. My family is not poor but it’s obvious that if I had not gone to a school outside my neighborhood due to a program I would be in jail right now.

        Maybe or maybe not because I was good and turned bad in the program, as my only associates from my neighborhood were those expelled from it.

        Point being I would not have reached my full potential I estimate. It is a black cultural thing however and it is weird how subtle it is that in essence race is now the system exploited by the black man. There is something m or E sinister and deeper I can’t put my finger on.

        My neighborhood is over 90% minority with many punjabi, Caribbean black, and now west African and afghan, somali, and iraqi people. I don’t know how to put what I’m trying to say eloquently, but I await your reply of think it so deserves it.

        • Canada has very different demographic characteristics than the United States. You cannot compare the two on crime and violence rates. I say this as someone who has a Canadian mother born and raised in Saskatchewan

      • The police aren’t actually used against the inner city gangs beyond some window dressing or as show response when things spill over to “better” areas. The gang leaders are usually part of the machine just like the Irish gangs in 19th Century New York City. The machine uses crime as form of social control. They don’t use the police.

        • tdinva, you’re on a roll. While it is marginally connected to your post and Singh’s comments, I’d point out the historical recognition of the gangs-and-crime connection to local political elites. That reality became a ‘meme,’ written into the plots of many well-known crime novels/films. I’d point out Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest” and “The Glass Key,” and Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” as to the rewards of using gangs for profit, and playing gangs off against each other as things get out of control. Hammett worked for years as a Pinkerton’s agent, and that opened his eyes to the complexities.

          I’m reminded again of the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron police. Wikipedia covers their history well enough.

      • Singh, you are not in jail mainly because you chose not to go to jail. I grew up in a tenement, and I suspect most of my high school peers wound up either dead or in Ossining or Riker’s. I chose to make something of myself, just as you did. Keep learning and you will prosper.

        And about identifying the underlying force in the slums: follow the money. When you find where it winds up, you have found the driver of the neighborhood.

        And tdiinva, the gang leaders are not only tolerated but encouraged by the “authorities” because they’re useful for delivering large numbers of voters to the polls as needed.

    • tdiinva: “Contrary to liberal cant, crime causes poverty not the other way around. There are still a lot of places in this country inhabited by poor people that aren’t crime invested beyond a little drunk and disorderly.”

      You’re first sentence is far too monocausal to be entirely correct, and your second sentence actually contradicts the first. If only crime causes poverty (sentence #1), then how did the poor regions without crime (sentence #2) become impoverished?

      • The simple observation that not all poor areas are crime ridden but all crime ridden areas are poor should be the tip off to causality.

        • tdiinva, that is more nuanced than — and directly contradicts — your first statement. Here’s that first statement again, which is unamibiguous: “Contrary to liberal cant, crime causes poverty not the other way around.”

          As to “all crime ridden areas are poor should be the tip off to causality,” please! HSBC paid $1.9 billion for money laundering for criminal and terrorist groups, and $4.2 billion for mis-selling derivatives. JPMorgan Chase is about to pay $13billion in fines. Enron, WorldComm and Tyco were almost entirely fraudulent and was Berni Madoff and his $50 billion pyramid scheme.

          Guess you never heard of any of this.

        • That’s OWS logic. Tell me again how many murders and muggingd were perpetrated by Wall Street banks? Weate not about white collar crime. WE are talking about physical violence. The logic stands. Poverty does not crime. Crime causes poverty.

          And if you looking for a cause for lack of opportunity it is illegal immigration not free trade.

        • Wall St. muggings? Obviously you’ve never heard of the London-based Libor rate scandal. Look it up so you know you’ve been jacked! UBS bank has already paid a paltry $1.5 billion, but the collusion and scope of the crime is much, much higher — and could well be in the trillions of dollars. I mention that HSBC has been money-laundering for terrorist organizations and that FACT doesn’t even sink in for you!

          Killings? You are obviously uneducated about basic American history, so you really need to read up on corporate influence behind America’s many 20th century military incursions and covert actions into “banana republics”, countries like Nicaragua, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Panama and the DR, as well as Iran under Mossadegh. I guess you think that corporate influence on American Foreign policy is entirely benign? Altruistic even? And we just invaded Iraq to give them the gift of democracy . . . and no one got rich?

          “Poverty does not crime. Crime causes poverty.”? Laughable, if it weren’t so pathetic. White collar crime and the many Wall St. backed imperial adventures ARE crimes, crime caused by phenomenal wealth seeking ever greater loot. Behind every great fortune there is a great crime, only the rubes don’t realize it.

  8. The economical correlation is obvious. But this might be more a comment on the effect of stifling firearm laws as it relates to economically related areas. Even overall, these laws don’t eliminate what they are purported to prevent. And it is the poor who suffer.

    • Really? Then why does NYC have a murder rate of only 6.3 per 100,000 in 2011? Cities WITHOUT gun control like Dallas (19.7), St. Louis (35.3) and New Orleans (57.6!!) have much higher homicide rates.

      That’s why gun control works.

      • Really? Firstly the cities you named are not without gun control. And secondly it looks you forgot the capitol of gun control. Hint – it is in Illinois and lately it is also the capitol of murder.

        • Wrong! Chicago’s murder rate in 2011 was 15.9, down from its high of 18.0 in 2008. Both Chicago and NYC have lower murder rates than pro-gun blue state cities like St. Louis and New Orleans.

          Big cities with tighter gun control have lower murder rates. Why don’t you know this very basic fact?

      • We don’t propose that lack of gun control = less crime and more gun control = more crime. Instead, we understand (unlike the anti-gun crowd) that gun control has NO EFFECT on crime. You can find cities with high gun control and low crime rate, low gun control and high crime rate, high gun control and high crime rate, low gun control and low crime rate. Gun control has no discernable effect on crime, so it should not be considered a solution to the problem. Yet it is beaten like the deadest of horses by the left because of it appeals to the quest for simple solutions and easy talking points, without much effort.

  9. Thanks Nick good catch on this. Lots more info on the map (school project) at the link. Picture says a thousand words… be interesting to see same for Chicago.

  10. Poverty does not breed violence. It comes from the culture, like knockout games. Take out black on black shootings an see where we as a country compare to the world, not bad actually. Gun violence is more of a black cultural problem, as is violence itself. No mom and no dad. Oooopppppsssss, not politically correct BUT CORRECT!

    • Anonymous: “Take out black on black shootings an see where we as a country compare to the world, not bad actually.”

      Not true. In the United States, a White person is almost six times more likely to be killed by another White person than by a Black person, according to FBI homicide data. In 2011, there were more cases of Whites killing Whites than there were Blacks killing Blacks.

      This even applies to gangs. Biker gangs commit a lot of crime, so do the Italian mafia, and meth and oxycontin gangs in West Virginia, Montana, and Idaho. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, for the period of 1980 to 2008, a majority (53.3 percent) of gang homicides were committed by White offenders, and the majority of gang homicide victims (56.5 percent) were White.

      • You must be the designated socialist apologist.

        Anon didn’t say anything about interracial crime only that approximately 50% of murders are committed by African-Americans. There is actually little cross racial murder in the United States. You should learn a little arithmetic before you comment. I will leave it up to you as exercise to see why both 50% of murders are committed by African-Americans and a white person is six time more likely to be killed by another white person can be both be true.

        I suspect like most lefties you have race on the brain.

        • You must have some difficulty reading. What Anon wrote was: “Take out black on black shootings an see where we as a country compare to the world, not bad actually.” That’s not true and you can research it yourself through the Justice Department stats (or look up “white on white crime”), which show that 86% of white victims were killed by white offenders. That’s a substantial portion of crime for a substantial portion of the population (roughly 73%).

          You’re right that most crime in America is not inter-racial, but even taking out Black-on-Black crime, you still have higher rates of violent crime here than in most advanced industrial democracies.

        • And there it is. I was wondering how far down I’d have to read before seeing the words “socialist” or “lefty”. All you have to do is throw in “libtard” and you’ll have a trifecta of ignorance.

          Camille, please don’t become discouraged; besides calling everyone a lefty or liberal, some people here have nothing else with which to respond.

        • I see you are a bit confused about the concept of a rate. Take out black crime and our crime rate, that is rate per 100k, us comparable to other European countries.

      • And what is a percentage of whites out of general population? Wikipedia says 72.4%. There is only 12.6% “African Americans”. It seems white people commit much less crime per cap. than other demographic groups.

  11. It is kind of funny to see people place so much blame on socialism. I grew up in so-called socialism and I think there was one aspect to the Eastern-block socialism that’s worth noting in this context.

    Nearly everybody had to have a job. Which is kind of stupid, but that’s besides the point. The point is that nearly every able-bodied man and woman *had* to have a job. Sure, senior citizens, mom at home with kids, disabled etc. were exempted. But nearly everybody alse had both a right to a job and a legal obligation to actually work for a living. You don’t want to work? Enjoy your stay in the prison.

    The situation where too many people simply milk the state is something entirely different. It is democracy at its worst, with polititians and idiots bribing the lazy and stupid and whatnot. Sad thing is I see no good solution to this mess.

    • Most people in America couldn’t even define “Socialism” and only started using the word in 2008 after hearing Sarah Palin use it, as a safe way of portraying Obama as “other”.

      All the people who rant about Socialism are the first ones with their hand out when Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment checks are doled out. Not to mention our socialized compulsor school, police, fire, military, road repair, etc.

  12. there’s no doubt a correlation between poverty & violence here; but, as leghorn would say, ”correlation does not equal causation.” not that i have any specific thoughts as to causation, i merely intend to caution you.

    what is truly fascinating is the medium cluster in the yellow blob to the east; that one does not even have a red center point, yet it has more shootings than any other yellow blob. certainly worthy of further investigation.

  13. Maybe the reason there are so many crimes in poor areas is simply that the old saw “crime doesn’t pay” is true, which would mean that poverty isn’t the cause of crime, but is instead the effect…

  14. Location, location.
    It seems its all in the lower economic areas where poorer people live Vs the business areas were they work. If they indeed do work.

  15. tdiinva: “I see you are a bit confused about the concept of a rate. Take out black crime and our crime rate, that is rate per 100k, us comparable to other European countries.”

    False. Do the math. Subtract black murder rates (both black-on-black and black-on-other) from the 2011 murder figures of an American per capita rate of 4.7. Now aggregate Western, Southern and Eastern Europe (regional rates of 1.0, 1.4 and 1.5). White on white crime in America is STILL much higher. You obviously aren’t looking at any statistics or attempting even minimal math.

    • White on White murder rates, which form only a part of total violent crime are on the order 1.5 per 100k. Now if you include Hispanics in the the white group, which the were in the days before affirmative action then the number is somewhere between 2 and 2.5 per 100k.

  16. If you expanded this map a little, it would quickly become clear where New York’s much-vaunted low crime rate comes from, including its drop in violent crime since the 90s that exceeds that of other major cities: gentrification.

    Sure, New York still has its pockets of concentrated poverty, mostly in Brooklyn and the Bronx, but those are more than counterbalanced by large, densely populated, middle-income to affluent enclaves from Manhattan to Staten Island. Harlem has become gentrified, and Brooklyn is becoming increasingly so. The largest pocket of concentrated urban poor has been “outsourced” to Newark. Places like Detroit and New Orleans simply don’t have that.

  17. The solution is simple: if everyone is made equally poor the violence will drop. The USG must keep debasing and destroying the currency to achieve equality since a society of equals is a happy society and a happy society is a loving society and a loving society is a peaceful society and a peaceful society is one where everyone will work together to achieve and share the new prosperity.

  18. I’m kinda dismayed that Nick was too politically correct to bring up the same Reddit user’s map of shootings overlayed on the ethnicity map (available at the same link)…

    • What point would that prove. Two parent black households have low poverty, and if you remove single parent households the ethnic crime disparity disappears.

      Any comments on Africa being murderous, get a reply with London being so bad pre – industrial there statutes saying you had to be armed.

      Any other foolishness you would like to speak of today?

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  20. There’s an even stronger correlation between the prevalence of single parent households and shootings. The two overlay pretty much perfectly.

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