Texas high school shooting

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by PApagreg

Yeah and guess what London is still safer than 50 major cities from the USA, New York has one of the strictest gun laws in the country so bad example there also thats only in a 2 month time frame if we looked at it year by year then we see London having less murders than New York City. Also New York hasnt really been notorious for gun violence in years

And a lot of THAT had a ton to do with Guliani's crackdown on gang violence and street crime, along with a parallel increase in Stop-And-Frisk, which is both a highly controversial but highly effective deterrent. Controversial because it disproportionately targets minorities, but effective because A. A huge number of people who were frisked in NYC for "being shady" turned out to be carrying - often ILLEGALLY carrying - regardless of why they were stopped, and furthermore often turned out to be violent career criminals on top of that, and B. People who would be highly likely to get frisked under those circumstances - i.e., gang members and drug dealers - either made it a point to not carry or simply did "business" elsewhere, and in either case they and their guns would no longer become a NYC-related statistic.

Point being, stories can be complicated.

See, here's another "problem" we have as people: Policies like "Stop-and-Frisk" do INFINITELY more tangible, measurable good to lower gun violence, and get illegal guns off of the streets and out of the hands of criminals and lunatics, than "Gun Control" in the generally spoken sense does. One involves Action, the other involves Words. Problem is, it's kind of inherently racist as a policy. BUT, it works, which is more than can be said about marches, protests, or Congressional chest-thumping. So what to do? Ignore a proven-effective method for combating crime and lowering gun violence, because it's "mean" or "inconvenient" to certain groups of people? Lots of people say Yes, but I personally think this is a case where the ends would totally justify the means. Because again, a LOT of those stop-and-frisk types may have been stopped "mostly" for being a minority, but ALSO turned out to be dangerous, violent criminals who would otherwise have slipped through the cracks. Shouldn't we just be grateful someone caught them before they hurt anyone else?

Should be cut-n'-dry, but it's not. This sh*t's crazy complicated. People will point to a place like NYC and say, "Look, it used to be a sh*thole, they cleaned it up a bit." Yeah, but ONLY by doing things that a lot of people have ethical objections to, even though the end result is much better for everyone. It's not like all the gangs and drug dealers just got jobs at the YMCA or something. The city only got "cleaned up" because the NYPD more or less started treating it like a war zone, with black people as "enemy combatants" until proven otherwise.

Personally, I acknowledge the racial bias inherent in the policies, but can't argue that the end result was a safer NYC environment for everyone, which should ultimately count for more, if we're seriously keeping score. Were they right? Wrong? Right on points, but Wrong on principle?
Depends what you grade on.

This is why these conversations are complicated. You can say, "Well, if people have to own a gun, they should have to be screened, be trained, pass a test, and keep their guns under lock and key," and mostly everyone agrees because that's all pretty good. But if you say, "Well, just make Stop-And-Frisk a nationwide policy, it's statistically proven effective," that's a whole other can of worms, because now you have people questioning if "safety" is worth the hardship, prejudice, inconvenience, sacrifice, and hurt feelings that other groups of people would endure for the end result.

Any place where things are "better", somebody had to eat sh*t to get everyone else to that point. It's unavoidable. And nobody wants to be the group that gets sh*t on, discriminated against, forced to relocate, or give up their Constitutionally-protected rights, just so things get better for Everyone Else. Which is totally understandable.

Again, it's a complicated conversation. And it's all conversation worth having, if we're ever going to see anything get better. But the "Guns are bad, just make 'em go away and everything else gets better" thing is fairy-tale horse sh*t. You can't, and it won't, so people need to shift gears to another angle, it's as simple as that.