Let me see if I understand the argument here: gang and drug violence is magically somehow worse, and the victims somehow more deader than the family members? I dunno, sounds pretty sus. Like “gang and drug” is maybe code for something.
An argument about stochasticity would be more sensible, but if the town of 50 thousand has an average murder rate of about 4 per year over a period of many years, then it has exactly the same per capita rate of violence and death as the city, feelings about the perps notwithstanding. The city might even feel safer to the people living there, because drug and gang violence tends to be highly localized and predictable, unlike a guy walking into a bowling alley in a small town on a random night and blowing people away.
LiberalGunNut™ here! I see a great deal on both sides of the gun issue, I’m more than a little familiar.
“Gang violence” is often a straight-up dog whistle that says, “Black and Hispanic kids blowing each other away doesn’t really count.”
While I don’t think we should be talking like this, it’s not always the dig whistle. Some well-meaning people say it to emphasize the idea that gun violence is not nearly so random as the media implies. Cute little white girl catches a stray round? National news. 5 black kids smoke each other in South Chicago? Might not make the local news.
Point being, the second scenario is not random. Those people choose that life. (I’d also argue it was thrust on them by poverty and poor education, but that’s a whole other rant.)
Still, I don’t want to be painted with the racist brush, so I stay far away from that rhetoric.
And BTW, calling out ~47% of gun deaths as suicides serves much the same purpose, with the same touch of disingenuousness. No one’s saying those are not tragic, but they’re not random and can be avoided.
If you’re not able to comprehend that a large city with the same murder rate as a small town based off per capita numbers isn’t the same when it comes to violent crimes…I don’t know what to tell you.
The city might even feel safer to the people living there, because drug and gang violence tends to be highly localized and predictable, unlike a guy walking into a bowling alley in a small town on a random night and blowing people away.
This just make any sense, so of course I don’t understand. The same per capita violent crime rate between a big city and a small city by definition means the same risk of being the victim of a violent crime in both places, despite whether one feels scarier than the other.
The only difference, though, is feelings. If it’s famicide, you can convince yourself it doesn’t affect you because your family wouldn’t kill you. Coincidentally, I just read an article about Kip Kinkel the other day. His parents also didn’t think he’d kill them, yet it happened. From a big picture perspective, famicide is random. But for 4 murders in a city of 50,000 people, the odds are ever in your favor that it won’t be you.
And, here’s the thing: Even though a city of 5 million people has 200 murders in a year (same rate of 8 per 100,000), it also will not be you, or anybody you know. (That’s with assuming that the murders were distributed randomly through the population, which they are most certainly not.) It’s easier to feel endangered by 200 murders, because that’s a number that the human brain can process, and 5 million is much, much too large for it. Based on the odds, though, there’s as much chance that somebody in your family will kill you as a big-city stranger will. And, those odds are almost nil.
(My city has a rate half that, around 4 per 100,000, and in all the decades that I’ve lived here, it’s never been anybody I know, and only once it was a friend of a friend. The victim of a famicide, actually.)
Let me see if I understand the argument here: gang and drug violence is magically somehow worse, and the victims somehow more deader than the family members? I dunno, sounds pretty sus. Like “gang and drug” is maybe code for something.
An argument about stochasticity would be more sensible, but if the town of 50 thousand has an average murder rate of about 4 per year over a period of many years, then it has exactly the same per capita rate of violence and death as the city, feelings about the perps notwithstanding. The city might even feel safer to the people living there, because drug and gang violence tends to be highly localized and predictable, unlike a guy walking into a bowling alley in a small town on a random night and blowing people away.
LiberalGunNut™ here! I see a great deal on both sides of the gun issue, I’m more than a little familiar.
“Gang violence” is often a straight-up dog whistle that says, “Black and Hispanic kids blowing each other away doesn’t really count.”
While I don’t think we should be talking like this, it’s not always the dig whistle. Some well-meaning people say it to emphasize the idea that gun violence is not nearly so random as the media implies. Cute little white girl catches a stray round? National news. 5 black kids smoke each other in South Chicago? Might not make the local news.
Point being, the second scenario is not random. Those people choose that life. (I’d also argue it was thrust on them by poverty and poor education, but that’s a whole other rant.)
Still, I don’t want to be painted with the racist brush, so I stay far away from that rhetoric.
And BTW, calling out ~47% of gun deaths as suicides serves much the same purpose, with the same touch of disingenuousness. No one’s saying those are not tragic, but they’re not random and can be avoided.
If you’re not able to comprehend that a large city with the same murder rate as a small town based off per capita numbers isn’t the same when it comes to violent crimes…I don’t know what to tell you.
Do you even know what familicide is???
This just make any sense, so of course I don’t understand. The same per capita violent crime rate between a big city and a small city by definition means the same risk of being the victim of a violent crime in both places, despite whether one feels scarier than the other.
But it doesn’t, one is localized to a single family unit, the other effects random people.
The only difference, though, is feelings. If it’s famicide, you can convince yourself it doesn’t affect you because your family wouldn’t kill you. Coincidentally, I just read an article about Kip Kinkel the other day. His parents also didn’t think he’d kill them, yet it happened. From a big picture perspective, famicide is random. But for 4 murders in a city of 50,000 people, the odds are ever in your favor that it won’t be you.
And, here’s the thing: Even though a city of 5 million people has 200 murders in a year (same rate of 8 per 100,000), it also will not be you, or anybody you know. (That’s with assuming that the murders were distributed randomly through the population, which they are most certainly not.) It’s easier to feel endangered by 200 murders, because that’s a number that the human brain can process, and 5 million is much, much too large for it. Based on the odds, though, there’s as much chance that somebody in your family will kill you as a big-city stranger will. And, those odds are almost nil.
(My city has a rate half that, around 4 per 100,000, and in all the decades that I’ve lived here, it’s never been anybody I know, and only once it was a friend of a friend. The victim of a famicide, actually.)