Oh to be naive and believe that only one political party can abuse power. I get it. Having a political enemy makes it easier to sleep at night for a lot of people.
Bad weekend for MS continues beyond tornadoes….
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I'll just make disingenuous my word for this thread.
You have to realize this a nothing burger, disingenuous "report".
If you drill down into the areas of the red states that actually produce the murder statistics, you know good and well what the demographics and political leanings of those areas are.
We can debate the reasons till my cows come home, but you know the facts of who is killing who and where.
I'm going to exit this thread with my condolences to the families and friends of this lunatic's victims. A truly awful, sad, disturbing incident.
I don't, so feel free to show your work and enlighten me. I linked to a report that looked at hard data across the entire country. If you've got another report or study that looks at nationwide data by county that shows something different, I'd be more than happy to read it.
You're either lying or ignorant.
And your report remains BS.
And as I've stated many times, I may lean a tad right, but I think Trump and Biden are both national embarrassments, so don't pigeonhole me as your opposite. I just happen to like honest discussion, and that report is not honest.
How is it not honest? It's a report that looks at nationwide data that states have to report to the CDC. Just because it doesn't support your preconceived notions doesn't mean it's wrong.
You made an assertion about drilling down into red states. I can only assume by your implication of what I'd find, you've done that drilling down and have actual data to back up that assertion. I'm being sincere - if you have actual data that says something different, I'm happy to take a look at it.
I'll help even more because this is the final point here for me that might pass for arguing because with you left/right leaning people is like occasionally arguing with my wife on the days when I say the sky is blue, then she says the sky is green. When I say it's green she says it's blue. When I says it's blue she says it's green and on and on and on...
The moral of the story is despite Republican people and Democrat people our country is even more 17ed than ever. Blaming my opinion is laughable because I don't have any money or power. The Republicans and Democrats do have money and that rules this country, not political parties. They just use that **** to keep us fighting each other.
If you're truly interested in having your mind changed about that report, you can easily do that on your own. I did when it was first published and then began immediately being trumpeted by basically every dem in the country.
Start with the Heritage Foundation (yes, right leaning, I know) rebuttal. Then look at national homicide rate demographics.
You can do this on your own, but you probably haven't because it would go against what you want to believe.
You have to change your own mind and if things like that report make you believe that red states rather than blue cities are the impetus in more homicides, then you don't want to know the truth.
I mean, why make anything illegal then?
The same argument about a different subject….”So dumb that there are laws that you have to be prescribed painkillers by a medical professional….criminals don’t get their narcotics that way!”
But for some reason its only used for guns and not literally any other illicit or illegal activity.
Thank you!
Thats the second mass shooting thread in a couple months that the poster cited Australia as a huge failure when it comes to reducing gun violence. I am pretty sure I actually provided statistics for the first thread and he said nothing in response. To continue to claim it though is just awful.
All he has done twice now is toss out a generalized claim that Australia's efforts have failed. No details, no stats, no nothing.
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Why is Australia nothing like the United States?
- both were British Colonies and developed around the same time period.
- both have a touch of controversial history with those who already occupied the land.
- both expanded to take over pretty much all the land.
- both are highly educated countries with high standards of living.
- both are English speaking(sorta) and historically Christian societies.
As for your last 4 sentences, you are showing your foolishness once again.
You're right. God I'm such a fool to be arguing with you. You are so right! Dammit!
Is that better??
You cannot compare Australia to the US. Australia is essentially an island nation that requires everything to be shipped via water-borne transportation. While smuggling inevitably happens, it's much easier to control ports rather than borders that are thousands of miles long. If an outright ban of firearms occurred here, the cartels would get to add another market for them to make a profit. Gangs and criminals would still easily get their hands on firearms. A "war on guns" would go about as well as the war on drugs. Secondly, banning firearms would probably lead to a ton of civil unrest at best and a civil war at worst. You're not getting that horse back in the barn.
Australia is also much more homogenous racially and culturally than the US; they are over 90% white. Most countries around the world are far more homogenous racially and culturally than the US. Differences in people groups tend to lead to violence. That's why I HATE all this diversity talk that is being pushed. Instead of magnifying what is common amongst Americans, they are dividing us into groups. When you magnify differences, violence will eventually follow.
Australia is also much more homogenous racially and culturally than the US; they are over 90% white. Most countries around the world are far more homogenous racially and culturally than the US. Differences in people groups tend to lead to violence. That's why I HATE all this diversity talk that is being pushed. Instead of magnifying what is common amongst Americans, they are dividing us into groups. When you magnify differences, violence will eventually follow.
OK, I read the Heritage Foundation report (assuming it's this one) and I looked at national homicide and violent crime statistics on the FBI website.
First off, yes, I don't put a lot of stock in the Heritage Foundation but I read their report and the numbers they use in it. It's almost like the author got paid for how many times he mentioned George Soros.
But as for actual data, they start with this chart, which sure enough shows a lot of red states at the top of the homicide per capita list:
But they seem to hinge their argument on this chart:
Except they don't finish working the problem by putting in the adjusted numbers and reranking the states. So, I did. Full disclosure, I typed all that in excel, so it's possible I fat-fingered some of the data. Also, the states in red are the states the Heritage Foundation calculated new values for.
What that seems to show is still a lot of red states at the top of the list. Of the Top 10 states, seven are pretty solidly red (Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Alaska). Two are solidly blue (Maryland and Delaware). And I'd argue Nevada with it's republican governor but democratic-held state legislature is fairly purple.
The biggest winner when you rerank with the Heritage Foundation data is Illinois... with it's democratic governor, two democratic senators and democratic-held state legislature. Though Tennessee also fared well, too.
So, if anything, the data the Heritage Foundation uses doesn't contradict the Third Way report, it reinforces it: Even if you take out large metro areas, red states tend to rank higher in murders per capita.
Next, as you suggested, I looked at national homicide statistics. I found this chart on the FBI website for 2019 (which is the most recent year listed). If you have another source, I'm happy to consider it. But what this chart shows is that for 2019, there were 7,964 arrests for murder or non-negligent homicide. 3,650 of those arrests were white and 4,078 were black (which seems like a fairly small difference), which breaks down to 45% white and 51% black.
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Demographically, what do the most murderous states have in common and demographically, what do the least murderous states have in common?
This is what we apparently can't talk about, so we make it political, and divide ourselves along lines that make the country worse.
I didn't move "goal post". I used the same websites to research the data as the article.
it is interesting that the article chooses to remove cities. Because when I researched Mississippi, I found Jackson (Hinds) to be 3rd on the list in murders "per capita". Coahoma and Washington had higher murders per capita than Hinds. However we all know using murders total, jackson would be highest. But I researched murder "per capita" just as the article did.
so yeah, using the 3rd place per capita helps the democrat argument. However using cities seems arbitrary and the moving of goal post to me. Because again using per capita the article doesn't remove the largest contributor to the data point.
Anyways, while there maybe plenty of Violence in "red states". It isn't solely because states are "red states." Take Nashville this week for example. This girl just contributed to a "red states" murder per capita but I'd bet anything she didn't vote for red or for Trump.
Why would you bet anything either way on which presidential candidate a deranged homicidal person voted for, or if they even voted at all? Those types aren’t really known for having predictable behavior.
As for the red state vs blue state argument…..meaningless. High murder rates follow high general crime rates. High general crime rates follow poverty. Poverty follows the uneducated and those born into it, which tend to go hand in hand. The two biggest hotbeds for poverty are urban inner city blacks and rural area poor whites (often in the south but also everywhere). Mississippi is also has a bit of an exception compared to the rest of the US with a large hotbed of poor rural blacks (the Delta), whom I would surmise commit violent crimes at a lower rate than their inner city black counterparts but probably at a higher rate than their wealthy white Delta counterparts.
If there’s evidence that any Democratic or Republican policies have improved education (HS graduation rates, bachelor’s and associate’s degrees, etc.) in those high risk areas specifically, I’ll show you a party that has reduced violent crime. But I doubt anyone can, as its an issue that’s been ignored for decades by both parties because there’s no political contributions or vote swings coming from those groups. It has nothing to do with enforcement or “law and order” candidates, though. Doesn’t matter if you are handing out 10 year sentences for shoplifting. People with nowhere else to turn are still going to turn to drugs, the streets, and violence when necessary. Believe it or not, even prison is a better situation in the eyes of many people than the one they often find themselves in due to lack of gainful employment.
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You can't do this at the state level. Have to look at closer census level to figure this out. Then overlay that with voting precincts and voting results. Otherwise you are skewing results for the state. Of course some red states will have higher numbers it's because their predominately blue voting areas skew the results for the rest of the state. For example, Jackson skews the results for the state of Mississippi.
And my post was originally based on democrat ran cities which if you look at the way those areas vote snd you look at the poverty level which you mentioned and inner city which those groups vote blue. Why? Handouts, weak on crime, more programs generally geared toward them. You are seeing cities revolting and asking for recalls of elected officials because of their weak stance on crime and they are being over run by criminals. New Orleans for instance has a terrible mayor who is extremely weak on crime as is the DA. The practice catch and release quite often. Then the who defund police movement snd not backing the police and letting them do their job has caused multiple police to quit and they can't hire anyone to replace them because they know they won't be supported and the criminals will keep getting away. I talked with a homicide detective in New Orleans at length about this. The woke policies have destroyed police enforcement. The kids in this areas have no fear because there are rarely meaningful repercussions and mom and dad are not there because they are on the crank or just as involved. I witness adults using their children to sell stuff on the side of the street so that they can take that cash back to mom or dad. It really is a sad situation. But I can guarantee you, that these mayors don't give a 17 and go in sit on criminals behalf at trials for mugging or murders. Rather than holding people accountable. Put them in county jail and they'll be out in no time doing the same crap or worse. Meanwhile you go across the lake into other parishes or go across the river from Jackson into a different county. The penalties are much harsher and the DA is not going to go lightly for the same offense.
Let me ask you an honest question, and hopefully you'll give me an honest answer. If you could pick the worst neighborhood in any city in any state in the US, that you would be most likely be afraid to walk down the street. Picture yourself there. Then think to yourself, would the majority of voters in said neighborhood, and the majority of elected officials and policy, be red or blue. THERE IS YOUR ANSWER.
Let me know.
Actually, those impoverished inner city groups don’t generally vote very much at all. And there aren’t nearly enough of them in just about any large city besides Jackson to tip a local election even if they did. A lot of actual voters who may or may not sympathize with them do vote blue. And some red too. But cities and urban areas in general vote blue for a variety of reasons that mostly don’t have anything to do with crime. It’s always been that way. You brought up New Orleans….about 25% of residents are below poverty line, which is a lot compared to the national average but not a lot compared to what is required to elect a mayor / congressman / etc. How are the other 75% voting?
The most prominent example of recall of public officials would be San Francisco and the recent DA recall. San Francisco is the most expensive city in the country to own or rent property in (and therefore vote in), and its blue as blue can be. Plenty of focus on “defund the police”, empty the prisons of petty criminals, etc. And there were some pretty embarrassing results in regards to things like shoplifting, property crime, public drug use, etc. But even with all that ridiculousness, they still never got anywhere close to a New Orleans or a St. Louis or Detroit in violent crime per capita. Why? Because there’s so damn many super wealthy and highly educated folks in the denominator of that calculation who aren’t committing any crimes at all. Its about money and financial viability. Its not Republican vs. Democrat. Its rich vs. poor.
I don’t doubt that the DA’s are harsher there. They are that way because that’s the campaign that they ran on to win over the wealthy suburban “law and order” voters. But the wealth, status, and ability of residents to pursue financial prosperity without turning to crime is what is really keeping the crime out. There are very few drug dealers, drug use / dependancy, neighborhood gangs, prostitution, etc. for those reasons. It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with DA. And if you are honest with yourself, you know for 100% fact that if you put the Hinds County DA in Madison County that it’s not going to suddenly turn Madison into Detroit. Likewise, you know that the Madison County DA couldn’t do anything to rid Jackson of its crime problems, no matter how harsh the sentences were. Repeat that same statement for New Orleans vs. Covington.
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Yes, Jackson does skew the results, which is why the report I first linked to (from the Third Way group) specifically takes out those large blue cities in red states - so those areas can't be accused of skewing results. And even when you take out the data for the large, theoretically blue-voting cities, a lot of those red states still have very high murder per capita rates.
Looking at local voting results also doesn't really tell you anything useful. By that logic, states or counties with high concentrations of blue voters would have higher crime rates. But that's obviously not the case. You can obviously cherry pick a few areas and say this county has high crime and also votes blue but, that's one of those correlation does not imply causation things. As Perd Hapley points out in his post above, crime in those areas has more to do with poverty levels than it does with who those people might be voting for (if they even vote at all).
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you missed the neck in laurel just last week shooting his rifle at 4H members practicing on a range.
Report: Felon fires at 4Hers
A felon is accused of getting drunk and firing a shot at about 40 young 4Hers who were practicing their shooting skills at a gun range on Sunday afternoon.
The honest answer is that the most unsafe I've ever felt in my life was in Corinth, Mississippi. And the only time I've had a gun pointed at me was in Houma, Louisiana. Both those areas voted heavily for Trump. But I'm sure that's not what you want to hear.
So to play your game: I lived in New Orleans for almost 20 years and during the time I lived there it had one of the highest murder-per-capita rates in the country. Maybe even the highest some years. And New Orleans obviously votes blue. But while I lived there, I never once felt unsafe. I was never mugged. I never had my home or car broken into. And I lived in just about every area of the city except the French Quarter and Marigny (though I spent plenty of time in both).
The straw man "worst neighborhood" that you're imagining isn't the worst neighborhood because it votes blue. It's the worst neighborhood because it's mired in poverty and underinvestment. And even if every single person in your fictional neighborhood is a stark raving communist who thinks Joe Biden is too conservative for their tastes, it doesn't really matter. Neighborhoods don't set state policy. They don't even set policy for the city they're in. So, the idea that because some fictional unsafe neighborhood has people in it who would theoretically support progressive policies that means progressive policies are bad is the kind of logic only a simpleton would use.
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I'm not looking to hear anything. Let's just say your experiences are vastly different than mine. I'm not one to judge because your experiences are yours, but that sounds you are intentionally forming your viewpoint through the lens that you want to see. Guess we can continue to nail it down to which party the criminal in each situation voted for, but we'll get nowhere.
Not a game. But just curious, even though you weren't mugged, if you had been, what would have been the chances of your mugger voting red or blue? And how often did you stroll through Central City? I have a hunch you didn't live there. Guess what though? I've walked through there, and I didn't get your wonderful vibes. What about New Orleans East? How often have you had a nice, refreshing beverage at an establishment out there?
It's not a straw man, it's fact. That neighborhood likely votes blue and is also mired in poverty. But I just have to wonder, if that same neighborhood voted red with the same poverty, the crime would be lower. That is also fact and shown throughout the country. It's the people who make the neighborhood what it is, not policy. Investment is the responsibility of the people (not the government).
I'll say man, it's either willful ignorance or lack of life experience. I mean, I can say all the day that the most unsafe I've ever felt was in a bar in Bartlett, TN right before a fight went down or something. But that doesn't mean that bar is more or less statistically safe than Orange Mound.
Let's get real here. And further, as long as you have a functioning brain and awareness, you're pretty much safe everywhere in the US (well, except......nevermind, you won't admit it). But your most dangerous areas in this country have the mix of poverty AND blue stain.
ETA: None of this had anything to do with Tapper McCummins capping 2 innocent people in Jackson, for daring to break up a redneck girlfriend beating.
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I'm not forming my viewpoint through any lens other than what has actually happened to me. One of my first apartments was on Baronne in Central City and it was fine. And one of my favorite lunch places before I moved was in the East (Bullard Seafood and Grill - it's great, highly recommend). I'm sorry you didn't have a better experience in New Orleans. The one person I know that was mugged was mugged by a drugged out white guy in the lilly white Garden District - my friend didn't think to ask his political views.
But your logic about "blue stain" doesn't hold up. If it were true, crime would be higher across the board in blue areas. It's not. And you can't honestly believe that if Central City started voting red en masse tomorrow that the crime rate would suddenly drop.
That's why I said blue AND poor. There's two groups of people who generally vote blue, really rich who can buy their way out of anything and the really poor who think the really rich want to give them everything. Of course there will be less crime in the blue areas of Beverly Hills. That's why your application of the stats in your articles is bad.
That practically could not happen immediately, voters don't just up and change their mind and viewpoints. But over time, if ideologies were changed and conservative principles were ingrained, it probably would have an effect on crime. Absolutely it would.
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Have you lived in New Orleans in last three years? How long ago did you live in New Orleans?
Generally, you make things illegal that are inherently bad. So you make driving under the influence illegal but not drinking. Obviously, some people are willing to make benign things illegal if they think it will deter actual bad behavior and/or results. Those people once were able to make alcohol illegal. They have also been able to more or less make sudaphedrine illegal (although you could get it i a prescription, a lot of pharmacies just stopped carrying it in certain forms.
This is absolutely an argument that is made. We have basically condemned a lot of people to undertreatment of pain without evidence that all that unnecessary suffering stops the opioid epidemic and a lot of people rightfully point out how cruel and callous that is.
The argument is made a lot for guns because it's often people who live in safe areas and can be reasonably sure police will respond reasonably quickly that are arguing for disarming people that don't have that privilege while simultaneously not disarming the people that are the biggest threat to them. I'm not sure what analogous situation there is to that.
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Can get you in trouble and 99% of the time, you won't be preventing anything. At best you'll just be deferring it until later because the abused partner is going to willingly put themselves in the same situation.
This is pretty insulting to poor people to argue that they are so deficient they don't respond to incentives. Policy certainly isn't the be all, end all. I'd rather live in a random, heavily Mormon town in Utah with blue policies than Jackson with red policies (at least with respect to crime). But to argue that just because people are poor, that they are so uniformly incapable of reason or responding to incentives that policy doesn't matter is a pretty dehumanizing view to hold of poor people.
WTF? Who said anything about incentives or poor people in general not responding to them? This discussion is about criminals specifically. First off….by and large, criminals commit crimes in areas where they live and spend most of their time. And secondly, criminals who commit crimes, particularly non-domestic violent crimes, are most often doing so out of extreme desperation.
A junkie committing armed robbery because he hasn’t shot up in 3 days and needs cash for more heroin. A kid getting a gang initiation beating the sh*t out a passerby in the neighborhood and taking his wallet, because he knows that he needs the protection to stay alive….and if he doesn’t do it then he’s out and next time he’s gonna be that passerby for the next kid (or worse). Those types aren’t having a thoughtful internal dialogue about whether they should do or not do those things because the sentence for it is 10 years vs. 15 years….and weighing the pros and cons. They also aren’t deep in thought about whether Trump or Biden (or fill in the blank local candidates) are the ones looking out for them and deciding how to vote.
For them, its just about surviving to the next day or keeping reality away for the next little while. People who are are poor and uneducated are obviously much more prone to finding themselves in those desperate situations than those from good stable economic backgrounds. Due to the financial barrier of entry to the wealthy suburbs, the total number of cases of those individuals and the associated crime risks are obviously much lower. Not a hard concept.
Well it was kind of a rhetorical question there, but thanks for the explanation. Point is that the argument of passing XYZ law is a bad idea because criminals are still going to do XYZ anyway is circular logic. The point of any new law for public safety is to expand the definition of what is called a criminal. And those that break the new law of what used to be legal are now subject to consequences or subject to greater consequences. I’ve been on both sides of various other gun control arguments over the years, but always against this one because its not founded in any form of logic.
There is an argument that all opiod narcotics should be freely available over the counter? Who is making that argument? Heroin dealers? I mean that’s a scorching hot take if I ever heard one. Nothing else to really say.
It is logical, you are apparently just not following it for whatever reason. It is not logical to burden law abiding people and prevent lawful and non-harmful activity when it is not going to stop the behavior/activity you are actually concerned about. It is arguably immoral to disarm law abiding citizens when you aren't going to be capable of disarming criminals for years, if not decades. We just don't have the political climate that would allow us to secure the southern border and implement checkpoints that allow the confiscation of guns from criminals.
There is an argument for that, but I was specifically referencing the fact that lots of burdens are put on providers that do not stop pill mills but do make doctors decide it's not worth their hassle to treat pain and the patient can just deal with it. Then when compassionate doctors end up prescribing a lot of opioids because they are some of the few that take their commitment to their patients seriously and aren't going to leave them in unnecessary pain because of an administrative headache, they draw the attention of the DEA and get second guessed on every prescription. People do make the argument that they should not burden doctors and patients in pain with regulations that aren't going to stop pill mills or the underground market.
How often is this happening- the 'compassionate' doctor scenario? Out of every ER case, surgery, etc etc- what % is even getting opioids to take home? Of that group, what % is getting anything more than a limited amount for the initial couple days post surgery or whatever?
I honestly dont know the answer to the questions. I genuinely figured doctors everywhere are like the ones Ive seen and heard about(from family/friends), and they basically just dont even prescribe most any opioid.
I think Tylenol with Codeine is the only thing I can remember people being prescribed in the last decade. Hell, my wife broke her shoulder and tendons, tore her ACL, and fractured something in her back in 2020 and once she left the ER all she got was OTC Tylenol.
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