Can you point out what you are talking about specifically? I am curious.
I think the key is showing clear paths for a way out. In Freakinomics they had a part where a drug dealer took meticulous ledgers on the flow of money. Most drug dealers would make more money working at McDonalds and have the advantage of not getting shot at. But the reward potential was enough to make that risk seem worth it.
It seems to me if we had something else in place, we would see crime greatly reduced. Sure there will always be some because there will always be evil and always be people who would rather steal than get by honestly. But most people just want to make their way like everyone else.
To me it is clearly a poverty issue, because as soon as you reach middle class wages, the chances of murder and violent crime nose dives.
There is a third option: treat people with respect and dignity, regardless of their wealth or poverty.
Donât want stinky back alleys? Build public urinals and provide housing for the homeless. As a general rule, folks arenât crapping in public because they want to.
It was all about making dealers etc uncomfortable standing around. Clean up the street, suddenly they stick out like sore thumbs. Leave busted windows, shadows, general dilapidation - well, they donât like it much, and move on.
Enforcement is a different area. Shame if the NYPD screwed this up.
Yep, you wonât see any sit-ins in Congress supporting this sort of gun control, because it does nothing to further a main objective - pissing off middle aged white guys who live in flyover country.
And thereâs the main delusion, that anyone gives a crap about âmiddle aged white guys who live in flyover countryâ. We just want far few fewer guns, especially the types designed to kill humans in large numbers, and not ducks. Whatâs bizarre is these rural people least likely to encounter an intruder in their home are the ones most paranoid about it and armed in preparation.
But the owners that refuse to propose sane policies or require anything of the NRA and the politicians they pay off arenât similarly trolling the rest of us that want less gun deaths?
Of course people are going to say shit out of anger. There arenât a bunch of âhicks in flyoverâ that are fucking us as a country, thereâs a whole system of assholes. And dragging it all down seems pretty tempting when you have such uncaring responses.
I think you misunderstood my âdonât give a shitâ. It isnât that their needs as Americans shouldnât be considered, itâs that no one is setting out to piss them off as a goal. We just want less guns, and that happens to piss them off.
Aw, I was teasing. I see public urination as a product of a lack of basic needs, like public restrooms, as here in NYC. More of a thing one is compelled or forced to do rather than a crime of volition I guess or something that needs to be punished.
Iâm a gun guy, but Iâd be happy with that too.
The problem is, you canât have mine first. And there can be NO exceptions outside of the military. Give me a plan that meets my criteria, and Iâm on board.
Iâm regularly reading about programs that have been tested - and found to work - that are being implemented elsewhere, while US police continue to spend money on programs that have been proven to not work. In the UK now, apparently, the police themselves are actually running scientific trials to see what practices actually reduce crime, while the US resists evidence-based policing. Some recent examples, off the top of my head: ârestorative justiceâ for youth offenders (getting perpetrator to actually communicate with victim) rather than prosecuting kids has been shown to be effective in decreasing the chances of future offenses. The US is moving in the opposite direction. As I mentioned, âscared straightâ programs have been shown to increase the odds that the youth put through it will commit a crime in the future. (The US still spends a lot of money on it, despite that.) Random police patrols are apparently useless (and cops are also useless at figuring out what crime hotspots they should be focusing on instead). Etc. Various programs that provide support (and money) for people that are at high risk for committing crimes have been shown to be very effective (and a lot cheaper than the alternative), but thereâs a lot of resistance - especially from conservatives - to them.
Then thereâs actual policing methods - the traditional interview and interrogation methods, witness identification and a lot of forensic techniques are known to create false positives, yet police in the US still use them. Iâm not sure how much of that is ignorance and how much is deliberate - theyâre perhaps more invested in getting someone for a crime rather than the actual perpetrator.
