
60 people shot in Chicago over the weekend - dawhizkid
https://nbcnews.to/2AMwFVm
======
jeffdavis
What is the main revenue source for these gangs? Just drugs?

Maybe we could just decriminalize a lot of the drug trade and starve the gangs
of the money to fund these gang wars.

~~~
abrahamepton
I think it's more that they've got a surplus of young men with no other
options; historically, in any society where that occurs, you get violence
sooner or later. Young men with nothing to do cause trouble, no matter where
they are.

~~~
jeffdavis
There are many factors, I was asking specifically about the funding.

~~~
abrahamepton
My point (poorly articulated) was that, in an environment where the cost of
labor is driven to zero, there doesn't necessarily need to be much revenue
involved at all.

And of course Chicago is a major cartel nexus, so there's plenty of illicit
money sloshing around.

~~~
jeffdavis
Nexus of what kinds of cartels? I guess that's my question.

~~~
abrahamepton
It's a major shipping/transportation hub, with a huge number of spanish-
speaking people, so i think cartels have historically found it a useful place.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaloa_Cartel#Operations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaloa_Cartel#Operations)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
You're not answering jeffdavis's question. The answer is "drug cartels", which
is jeffdavis's point. They aren't just some generic cartels; they're
specifically _drug_ cartels.

But you have a bit of a point, too. If you have tons of time and no money,
there are a fair number of ways you can earn some money outside the law. Drugs
are the most profitable currently, but if they were made legal, the action
would probably move to other kinds of illegal activity.

~~~
abrahamepton
I guess the way I see it, the drugs are incidental. Historically they haven't
been, and for now the mix of drugs is changing - less weed, more opiates and
meth - but I don't think just getting rid of the drug war would end gang life
in Chicago.

Let me be clear that I think the drug war is a terrible idea for a million
reasons and should be ended tomorrow, or like, yesterday. But I don't think
its end would be the end of gangs in places like Chicago, where the supply of
young men is abundant and has no other alternative. Gangs will just find some
other criminal activity, as the cartels themselves have started to do.

------
pssflops
ABC is reporting 66 shot [0] and 12 fatalities.

[0] [http://abc7chicago.com/66-shot-12-fatally-in-chicago-
weekend...](http://abc7chicago.com/66-shot-12-fatally-in-chicago-weekend-
shootings/3892234/)

------
netgusto
A terrorist attack without terrorists. We're doing this to ourselves. I think
it's time to make the gun illegals on the street on a massive scale.

~~~
jeffdavis
What specific policy are you proposing?

~~~
netgusto
I'm not proposing any policy. Just pointing to a state of the world that I
think would cause less shooting.

~~~
ilove_banh_mi
Chicago _already_ has some of the strictest anti-gun policies in the US.
[edit] They had, in effect and for decades, a ban on the sale of guns
(requiring registration but then not actually allowing it). Some of the
restrictions have been disallowed in recent years due to conflicting with the
Constitution.

This may be why the level of violence in that particular town is of interest
to many social and political commentators.

~~~
netgusto
But are guns illegal, though?

From what I can gather [1], they're not. Some semi-automatic firearms,
considered as assault weapons, are illegal in Chicago.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Illinois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Illinois)

~~~
towndrunk
So are you saying the Gangs will follow the laws?

~~~
abrahamepton
The argument for gun control has never been that criminals will just obey the
gun control laws.

The point is, and has always been, and will always be, to reduce the number of
guns available. Fewer guns === fewer shootings. Axiomatic.

Of course, it's substantially easier said than done. But the mechanism by
which gun control reduces gun crimes really doesn't require any criminal to
spontaneously follow the law for some reason. It's a public-health measure,
like vaccinating kids.

~~~
jeffdavis
"Fewer guns === fewer shootings. Axiomatic."

That's not an axiom.

Left as an exercise: find a subset of guns such that, if they were destroyed,
is likely to increase the number of shootings.

~~~
abrahamepton
Yes, I would argue it is in fact an axiom: a statement that is regarded as
being established or self-evidently true.

Since basically all of the evidence we have available to us suggests that
fewer guns lead to fewer shootings, and more guns lead to more shootings;
since the only real objections to that logic are rather contrived "find the
subset of guns such that removing them leads to more shootings" logical toys
with little if any foundation in the real world; and since it's, I mean, just
clearly correct - I'm curious why you think such a proposition is not
obviously true.

Clearly there is a debate about the effectiveness of gun control in America,
the one country on the planet that has yet to make up its mind about this.
However, I would suggest that such a debate is not being carried out in good
faith.

~~~
jeffdavis
Calling something an axiom (when it's not) dismisses any nuance and leads to
bad policies, even if it's "mostly true".

"More cars === more global warming" is mostly true, but might lead to really
bad policies if taken too strictly. For instance, someone might make new cars
illegal, which would prevent us from taking advantage of more efficient or
more electric cars thta actually help the situation.

~~~
abrahamepton
I grant you that oversimplification can be a problem.

However, I would argue that we're not particularly oversimplifying here.
[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-
an...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/)
sums up the overwhelming amount of literature demonstrating the obvious point
I'm making quite nicely.

Social science is not the same thing as a pure mathematical theorem, so in
that sense, an axiom in the social sciences is not as tidy as an axiom in a
mathematical context.

Nevertheless, I think the weight of evidence makes pretty clear that more guns
=== more shootings. I'm willing to compromise and say that it is not
technically an axiom, but instead a well-established fact, if that makes you
feel any better.

But I think the far greater danger we face is people obfuscating simple truths
because their political agendas require it. Rather than just letting "more
guns === more shootings" slide, we're getting into an extended back and forth
here, that kiiiinda obscures the fact that the overwhelming amount of evidence
is on my side.

And the consequences of this, as opposed to your odd hypothetical where we
take gun control TOO seriously in the US, are clear: more people will die. I'm
sorry to be blunt, but, there you have it.

------
jeffdavis
How big of an area is this happening in? Would police saturation of the area
be practical and effective?

~~~
abrahamepton
A) Big. The south side alone is ~60% of the city; the west side is much
smaller, but the point is that by land area (not a great measure, admittedly),
there's just a ton of space to patrol.

B) No. It's been tried, pretty consistently, with (at best) mixed results.
Under Rahm, at one point (may still be true), CPD was paying boatloads of
money in overtime to saturate violent neighborhoods.

C) That said, the book Ghettoside makes the really convincing argument that
neighborhoods like the ones under discussion in Chicago simultaneously suffer
from under- and over-policing. There's a massive police presence in much of
the south side, kinda, and a lot of people get arrested for a lot of stuff. At
the same time, the murder clearance rate (the number of murders "solved" by
the police) was ~17% in 2017 ([https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/murder-
clearance-rate-in-c...](https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/murder-clearance-
rate-in-chicago-hit-new-low-in-2017/)) but over 60% in the (rather more
violent) 1990s. So a lot of people have a lot of negative interactions with
police, but the most serious crimes - murder especially - rarely get solved.
Lots of people in the neighborhood know (or suspect) who did it, but that
person never goes to jail (for that crime), resentments build up, it becomes
harder for police to cultivate good sources/relationships, retaliations occur,
etc etc you can imagine how things go.

D) There have been pretty successful interventions; CeaseFire comes to mind
([https://chicagodefender.com/2018/01/10/the-return-of-
ceasefi...](https://chicagodefender.com/2018/01/10/the-return-of-ceasefire/)).
But it's suffered from lack of money and infighting at the state level between
Rs and Ds. The basic idea, though - intervene in violent situations with
people who are from those neighborhoods and used to be in gangs - seems to
work quite well. It just needs money.

E) Crime is still actually down when compared to the 70s/80s/90s. Not that
that's much comfort to someone living in one of the affected neighborhoods.
But the country as a whole has become both more peaceful and more media-
saturated, so aberrations like this get much more attention and the problem
seems worse than it is - though again, that doesn't mean much to someone who
just had a loved one get shot.

------
dingo_bat
Is there a riot going on in the city? TFA has literally no details except that
the mayor has blamed the shootings on guns(?).

~~~
codingdave
Click the 'Read More Here' link.

~~~
dingo_bat
Wow that was kind of stupid of me to miss that.

~~~
codingdave
Nah, it wasn't exactly the most user-friendly page.

