The Road to Perdition

 

From 2016 to today, 20,914 residents of Chicago have been shot. This total includes the wounded and those who died. According to the ‘Shot Clock’ from the HeyJackass.com website, a person is shot every 2 hours and 22 minutes, a person is murdered every 11 hours and 54 minutes. That is based on the 2022 shooting statistics. 2022 isn’t over yet.

During the 20 years of the Afghanistan war, you would have been safer in Afghanistan than you would be in Chicago. The Road to Perdition is paved with bad intentions and good intentions. The bad intentions are far more objective than the subjective good intentions.

Other cities in the United States are in a competition with Chicago for the most dangerous city in the US.

Good intentions involve motives, and motives involve a heavy dose of rationalizations. Seeing everything through a political lens, especially when that political lens includes criminal activity, leads to anarchy. When a political party is paralyzed by the analysis of motive, the choice becomes to ignore the mayhem, or to assign blame to everyone but the criminal.

Motive may be useful to try and identify a suspect, but it is not necessary to obtain a conviction. Criminals use motive to rationalize their crimes. Politicians use motive to either ignore a problem or to make sure no one strays from the road to perdition and to punish those who try to stop the rush to oblivion.

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  1. JoelB Member
    JoelB
    @JoelB

    For all the shooting depicted in the western movie genre, there was probably less killing with guns in the West between 1865 and 1900 than there is in modern Chicago in a year.

    • #1
  2. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    JoelB (View Comment):

    For all the shooting depicted in the western movie genre, there was probably less killing with guns in the West between 1865 and 1900 than there is in modern Chicago in a year.

    After the Civil War the town takeover from bandits in the West is overblown. Civil War vets were quite adept at handling firearms and willing to use them to defend their towns, homes and lands in the American West.

    • #2
  3. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    Per capita, Chicago is idyllic compared to Baltimore.  I thought Charm City might have some young guys coming up who would give B-town a shot at moving ahead of St. Louis or even New Orleans during the pandemic but the extra carnage did not accrue.

    The myth of the Wild West is that of simple folk cowering in terror, awaiting the Earps, Matt Dillon or Bat Masterson to save them.  Mostly it was about rapidly developing places where people simply did not put up with violence.  Shopkeepers, housewives and preachers were more likely to set the tone than gunslingers.  Some hard men (idiots) once robbed the payroll for the copper mine in Bisbee. They rode back to Tombstone, boasting of their daring. Very shortly, a very large posse arrived, dragged them out of the infamous Oriental Saloon and hung them.  It was the drunken gunfighter demographic that did the cowering that day.

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  4. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    Doug Watt: Other cities in the United States are in a competition with Chicago for the most dangerous city in the US.

    Chicago isn’t even in the top 15, according to this article.  If their data is correct, Baltimore and Birmingham have a homicide rate twice as high as Chicago.  You’re three times more likely to be murdered in Saint Louis than in Chicago!

    • #4
  5. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Doug Watt: During the 20 years of the Afghanistan war, you would have been safer in Afghanistan than you would be in Chicago.

    This is why we need to pull out of Chicago now . . .

    • #5
  6. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    Laws that restrict gun ownership are historically racist. There were very few until after the Civil War, when some states and localities tried to disarm freed slaves. See Frederick Douglas’ comment about the three essential American boxes: the ballot box, the soap box, and the cartridge box.

    Statistically, the only gun-related laws that can be shown to have any affect whatsoever on violence are laws that allow citizens to carry concealed. When a criminal doesn’t know whether an intended victim can shoot back, crime is substantially reduced. Therefore, people who carry concealed are protecting the community as a whole, not just themselves and those close to them. If the intent is to reduce crime and violence, Gun-Free Zones are precisely the opposite of what is required.

    These simple, obvious facts are almost never mentioned, and when they are mentioned they are ridiculed. This is the dictionary definition of gaslighting. A friend once asked me what “gaslighting” meant, and I used the second example above to illustrate it. It not only answered his question, it got him thinking about 2A support.

    • #6
  7. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    The problem isn’t really *shootings*, the problem is *murder*, which can be accomplished by stabbing, running over people, pushing people onto subway tracks, etc etc.  

    I don’t know what the fungibility of murder is, but if all guns somehow vaporized tomorrow, I doubt that the rate of killings by people who would otherwise kill with guns would drop to zero.

    There were very few guns in Europe prior the the 14th century, but the place was not notably violence-free.

     

     

    • #7
  8. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    David Foster (View Comment):

    The problem isn’t really *shootings*, the problem is *murder*, which can be accomplished by stabbing, running over people, pushing people onto subway tracks, etc etc.

    I don’t know what the fungibility of murder is, but if all guns somehow vaporized tomorrow, I doubt that the rate of killings by people who would otherwise kill with guns would drop to zero.

    There were very few guns in Europe prior the the 14th century, but the place was not notably violence-free.

     

     

    Did medieval kings permit bows and swords but restrict the sale and ownership of assault bows and assault swords?

    • #8
  9. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    David Foster (View Comment):

    The problem isn’t really *shootings*, the problem is *murder*, which can be accomplished by stabbing, running over people, pushing people onto subway tracks, etc etc.

    I don’t know what the fungibility of murder is, but if all guns somehow vaporized tomorrow, I doubt that the rate of killings by people who would otherwise kill with guns would drop to zero.

    There were very few guns in Europe prior the the 14th century, but the place was not notably violence-free.

    Did medieval kings permit bows and swords but restrict the sale and ownership of assault bows and assault swords?

    Pope Urban II forbid Christians from using them against Christians in 1096.

    It didn’t take.

    EDIT:  “them” should be “crossbows.”

    • #9
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