“Using poverty as reasoning behind someone picking up a gun to kill another person is something I have railed against for years,” James Walker writes at Connecticut’s nhregister.com. “To me, the connection didn’t make sense. I used my own family and people I grew up with as examples that being poor does not drive a person to have complete depravity toward human life. But I was wrong . . .

Poverty will make you envious and temptation will turn your soul. Experts say the reason is crystal clear: There are too many people living in the desperation of poverty, and too many of them who feel they have nothing to live for. And when people have too much idle time on their hands to do nothing but think about how bad things are, many will be driven to violence.

There’s no doubt that areas plagued by “gun violence” tend to be low-income hell holes. But do you accept the idea that economically-driven existential rage is the prime force behind seemingly intractable inner city “gun violence”?

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118 COMMENTS

  1. Actually, it’s the other way around. It’s not that poverty causes criminality. Criminality leads to unemployment and poverty.

      • Having a felony conviction will *immediately* disqualify someone for employment at *many* companies.

        This is the drive behind the law to make it illegal for employers to ask about criminal convictions on employment applications.

        Because it ‘discriminates’ against CRIMINALS…

        • And when the criminal that the company hired (because they couldn’t ask about personal history) shoots some employees or customers, the company gets sued.

      • When you have Crime, it cost business more to operate in the area. So less jobs, less jobs lead to oversupply of the labor force and smaller tax base. Over supply of labor lowers wages which again lowers spending which then causes stores to have lower profit which again leads to even lower tax base. Lower tax base is less money to spend on infrastructure, IE schools and services like police. Less police equal more crime which again creates a higher cost to do business. Less money on school means drop in education which leads to a less skilled workforce which leads to lower wages and less jobs. Proof you ask for, South Side of Chicago. It went from a vibrant prosperous area to a slum. No company in their right mind would open a business in a high crime area

        • Nicely stated. It’s a cycle; poverty leads to desperation leads to violence leads to convictions leads to poverty and desperation and around and around and around.

          It’s fairly well established that if people have enough to eat and a home, they’re less likely to be violent — far less. But it’s also true that people who have been violent and especially if they’ve been convicted are less likely to be able to obtain enough to eat or a home by legal means.

    • Data that answers some questions:
      first of all, this kind of thing is not new, but the scope has grown exponentially in the US since the late 60’s.
      data: http://bfy.tw/BPKD
      It has more to do with single moms than with poverty itself:
      data: http://bfy.tw/BPJi
      data: http://bfy.tw/BPJw
      This is actually the logical conclusion of a society that has bought into feminism. Not “women can do stuff” feminism, but modern, mainstream, militant feminism of the “all men are rapists” vein.
      data: http://bfy.tw/BPKK

    • Bullshit. Being poor doesn’t equate to being a murderer. Lots of people grow up poor but they don’t kill people. I’ve known lots of poor people in my life but they didn’t kill nobody. There was poverty in the black community under Jim Crow but black people were not killing each other. When Dr. King gave his speech in D.C. in 1963, you’d be hardpressed to find crime in a black neighborhood. You had some petty crimes in black neighborhoods then but not this explosion of gun violence and schools and parks and even churches being shot up. No pastors of churches were being killed for a gold chain that ain’t real and a few dollars. We didn’t kill one another like today. There has always been poverty in the black community. Under Jim Crow when they lynching people for fun literally, Yes, it was entertainment to lynch people, and in the Jim Crow South where blacks lived in extreme abject poverty, a brutal and grinding poverty that would literally kill most people of other ethnic groups, we came up and rose like the Phoenix in every human endeavor known to man. And I ain’t talking about Bob Johnson from BET, Oprah Winfrey, or Jay Z neither, not to negate their achievements but I’m talking about the millions upon millions of black men and women who pulled themselves out of poverty and out from under the yoke of horrific, vicious, and violent racism, far more horrific than most people know and made a success of their lives and raised up children to do the same and the millions more doing it everyday. I’m talking about the millions upon millions of unsung heroes in the black community that no one knows about. The doctor, the lawyer, schoolteacher, principal, college professor, engineer, the small business owner, chef, and the list goes on and on. That’s what I’m talking about. So given the facts that the majority of blacks are decent, hardworking, and law abiding people, it ain’t no damn excuse for these knuckleheads in our community to be doing the shit they’re doing and who they’re doing it to. No excuse. Poverty cause violence my ass. Get the Fuck outta here.

    • “What leads to crime is your hood being run by Leftists like say, the DemoCrap Party.”

      Appalachia coal country is one of the poorest parts of America, and also one of the Democrat party’s bluest strongholds.

      They aren’t blowing each other away like the inner-city is…

      • The difference being population density. We’ve known since the 70s that the more tightly you crowd mammals together the more likely it is that some will engage in violence, and we are, after all, mammals.

        Plus I know from experience that when you have nature around there are a lot of ways to let out anger than there are when you’re trapped among concrete and buildings.

        • “The difference being population density.”

          I concede that very well may be part of the problem.

          Perhaps that’s one of the goals of HUD and their drive to move ‘section 8’ housing out of the inner-city and into the wealthier suburban areas.

          The only problem is, when that happens, crime tends to spike.

          Kinda tends to dampen the ‘environment vs. nurture’ argument…

        • Parts of it are. Classic Democrat, that is. Not the poison the ‘Progressive’ element has done to it…

      • A major difference in violence between the city ghettos and the mountains of West Virginia, the delta of the lower Mississippi, the hills of southeast Oklahoma or where ever we have rural poverty is summed up in one word. FAMILY

    • There was a time in my life that I was unemployed, poor, not quite depressed, and seriously struggling. I also owned guns, and managed not to sell them to get by (came close though).

      AT NO TIME did I ever even CONSIDER using one or more in commission of a crime. Nor did I commit any crimes.

      I worked REALLY hard for a LONG TIME at finding a job, and did whatever it took in the interim to live, eat (sometimes not), and pay my bills.

      You know, white privilege.

  4. Low IQ leads to poverty and a propensity towards violence.

    There is a reason these things happen in areas that are demographically homogeneous.

    • “There is a reason these things happen in areas that are demographically homogeneous.”

      Appalachia is dirt-poor and heavily lily-white.

      Why aren’t they murdering each other like they are in Chicago?

      • Let’s examine the differences in Appalachian poverty and inner-city poverty.
        1) Much of the Appalachian poverty has cropped up in the past few decades, as the coal industry has disappeared. The parents and grandparents of today’s poor were proud, hard-working coal miners.
        2) The people in Appalachia still tend to get married and raise children in two-parent households.
        3) They tend to be faithful, churchgoing people who learn about the Bible and have that as their moral foundation.
        4) They vote Democrat because of multiple generations of letting their unions tell them how to vote. I’ve known Democrats in coal country who are more conservative than many Republicans.

        The population density argument is a weak one. If the people of Appalachia were raised by fourth generation unwed mothers, never knew their father, rarely encountered anyone who actually worked for a living, and had no spiritual beliefs to guide their behavior, then their behavior would be as bad as inner-city youth.

    • Plus we’re finding that growing up in an atmosphere of poverty and especially of violence results in lower IQs — why, I don’t think anyone has a clue yet, but the numbers are pretty solid. So we have another cycle going on.

      • We all acknowledge that some breeds of dogs are dumb and some are smart, yet we also acknowledge there will always be an exception to the rule found. When we are willing to acknowledge this same truth in humans we might be able to solve this problem

  6. It’s not poverty in and of itself. The war on drugs leads to gun violence. Prohibition of anything has never done anything but create mayhem.

    “The war on drugs drives violent crime, which in turn pushes up incarceration and generates other negative social outcomes. You just can’t move $100 billion worth of illegal product without a lot of assault and homicide.” – Harvard Prof Danielle Allen

    Want to solve the inner city murder problem? Legalize everything.

    • Exactly. Get govt out of the way. The demand and business opportunities after legalization would create sustainable private-sector jobs and expand the tax base. And as we’ve seen in the ongoing case study that is Portugal (pop. 10M, decrim 16-years ago), when you change the emphasis from interdiction enforcement to public health, you see a drop in overdose and addiction rates. Win-win.

    • “Want to solve the inner city murder problem? Legalize everything.”

      Yes! Law is the base cause of every depravity. Murders are on the rise because murder is illegal. Rape is on the rise because rape is illegal. Burglary is on the rise because burglary is illegal. Car thefts the same.

      When you have no laws, you have no crime! Simple as that. The only law, the only “right”, you have is that which you can personally enforce.

        • million: I don’t think folks in the hood will be able to afford the government’s version of legalized drugs. They will keep doing what they are doing.

        • “intentionally obtuse?”

          No. Pointing out that removing law that prohibits only our favorite activity cannot be done without granting that all law leads to crime, thus all law should be eliminated. Pretending that making drug use illegal causes crime is no more valid than declaring that laws against murder lead to more murder.

          One can legitimately argue that Prohibition did nothing to really improve the society, but one cannot also argue that repeal of Prohibition removed all the downside of alcohol use. Too many people want to believe that drug use has no negative impact. They also believe that making all drugs legal will eliminate all the negative societal impacts. As an example, I read on Yahoo that in Colorado, there are crimes committed as a result of legal marijuana. Those crimes are done by people wanting to eliminate the competition, grow and sell untaxed marijuana, and such. Those crimes were reported to be minuscule when MJ was illegal.

    • You can’t just legalize drugs and be done with it. You’ll also have to make massive appropriates funding arts and crafts down at the continuous learning annex at the local community colleges. After all, once the vicious, depraved gangster monsters roaming the streets of their drug empires have no illegal drug trade to corrupt them and seduce them into lives a violent crime, the obvious outcome is that they’ll all give up the life and immediately take up Tai Chi, pottery, ball room dancing, or possibly something in the culinary arts.

      Grow up. There may be multiple good reasons to end the so-called war on drugs. That these savages will settle down and become gentle little lambs isn’t one of them.

    • The problem, Tori, is that when government decides to legalize recreational substances, they insist on regulating it in a way that keeps prices high enough that there continues to be a black market. We’re experiencing that here in Oregon, where marijuana for legalized, but the legislature turned the regulating over to an existing bureaucracy; that bureaucracy made sure that any cheap method of growing the stuff was illegal, growers have to be licensed, distributors have to be licensed…. The solution for Oregon would be to abolish the liquor control agency and just let booze and pot function according to free market principles — the black markets would go away and crime would drop. But they don’t want that; they want the price kept artificially high so municipalities can tax it and get more revenue.

      An international expert on the matter has repeatedly said the only regulation on marijuana should be that it be grown and distributed by small family businesses only, with no other restriction whatsoever, but government only listens to experts when they give advice that will increase revenue, not when it will increase liberty.

  7. No it doesn’t. I was up to my eyeballs in debt after college. Living on ramen noodles and only get local tv. No cable. Paying rent, student loans, and utilities pretty much sucked up all my money. Never once did even consider hurting someone because of it.
    It’s a lack of morals and work ethic. I want what you have bit I don’t want to work for it so I will hurt you and take it. Or this person dissed me or my homie so I gotta thug up. It’s that mentality that causes the problems seen in Chicago now. It’s no longer love and let live. It’s you said something so I’m gonna kill you.

    • “It’s a lack of morals and work ethic.”

      Caused solely by the Democrat run socialistic progressive agenda.

      • “It’s a lack of morals and work ethic.” Caused solely by the Democrat run socialistic progressive agenda.

        Funny, but I thought that the whole “lack of morals and work ethic” was a consequence of Genesis 3 and Adam eating that piece of fruit.

        Of course the whole socialist progressive agenda simply continues to make a bad situation worse. Marxism itself is a consequence of the Fall.

        • The Genesis account of Adam eating of the forbidden fruit tells how man received his Sin Nature, but makes no comment regarding a work ethic. There is no direct account in the Bible that indicates that Adam or his immediate offspring were lazy. Even Cain who slew his brother was not a lazy man as he was a farmer that tilled the soil for his livelihood.

      • Caused by Democrats? Doubtful — most of the felons around here would have voted for Trump if they could vote. Violence is no respecter of party.

        It’s probably fair to note that most of the felons around here are white nationalists or supremacists.

  9. I actually had someone make this same argument to me, saying gun freedom seems to work fine in rural areas, but it would be a enable poverty stricken cities to become even worse. Would you advocate making it easier for not only the gangbangers, but also their vengeful victims to arm up?

    Saying it was a “self-correcting problem” was not well received…

    • “Self-correcting” — indeed. An armed society would be a polite society once the people who can’t learn to be polite are eliminated. “Think of it as evolution in action” certainly applies.

      Of course that only works when people respect each other as human beings — maybe not as successes, or as intelligent, or talented, or sensible, but as human beings. Where that respect is lacking, no system will make society work — and that itself is to a degree an argument for the self-correcting aspect.

      The trick is to not give everyone guns overnight, rather to slowly but steadily increase ownership. The first goal would be to make sure every law-abiding citizen is armed, then those with infractions, finally those with misdemeanors. Once those portions of the population have learned to be polite, the felons will have little choice but to learn the same — and then everyone can and should be armed.

  10. With very few exceptions, nobody can afford everything that they want.

    Poverty isn’t the problem, envy and greed are. Nothing forces you to place your own comfort over another’s survival, and deaths due to starvation and exposure are exceedingly rare in modern society.

  11. Thanks for the quotes around “gun violence”.

    So, during the Great Depression” many people were very poor and you could buy a firearm at a hardware store. How was violent crime back then?

    • Stereotypes would say that was not exactly prevalent, but it was highly public and organized. See Capone, etc.

    • As my father so oft reminded us as we grew up, he walked to school, uphill both ways, in the snow, year round, and bought a loaf of day old bread for a nickel to survive; not many could afford bullets.

    • Prohibition (1920-33) overlapped with the Great Depression (1929-39) so good luck parsing how much violence was self-inflicted.

        • Million –

          The Puritans didn’t give us Prohibition. The Pietistic and Revivalist tradition gave us Prohibition (and probably feminism too).

          The Puritans had their issues, but they certainly weren’t teetotalers. The Puritans were actually pretty fond of alcohol, and sex, within the Biblical framework.

          I have heard it said that American Christianity has had two towering figures. Jonathon Edwards represents the Puritan strain, and Charles Finney represents the Pietistic Revivalist strain. Sadly for Evangelicalism, Charles Finney probably had more influence than Edwards. I believe Charles Finney did immeasurable harm to the Christian movement in the United States.

        • We have Prohibition to blame for Organized Crime & The War On Drugs. IMO, if alcohol and drugs had been simply Legalized & Taxed (this is what the gov is pissed about, missing the tax $), there would be less crime today. When Prohibition ended the rouge cops wanted something else to beat people up on, so the Drug War was invented. OC simply shifted emphasis from booze to drugs, with alarming results. Can anybody deny that Drug Cartels are more powerful than many governments?

  12. “…Experts say the reason is crystal clear: There are too many people living in the desperation of poverty, and too many of them who feel they have nothing to live for.”

    What experts? What are their qualifications to be called ‘experts?’ And why do they not show their work as to how it became ‘crystal clear?’

    And then why do they focus on the things those people who feel they have nothing left to live for are doing instead of focusing on how or why those people got to that place at all? Why are you so-called experts so concerned about the poor people having guns instead of being more concerned about why those people are poor or showing more concern about ways that could help those people discontinue being poor?

    • “…Experts say the reason is crystal clear: There are too many people living in the desperation of poverty, and too many of them who feel they have nothing to live for.”

      But even if you accept that (not saying I do), it’s not a direct like from poverty/desperation to guns – you have to pass through “drugs” and “gangs” first.

  13. There are 8 Revcontent ads on the right, on my browser every mother loving one of them is ‘mama June’. For the love of god, Montresor! At lunchtime?

  14. Poverty removes a lot of options for how a person lives a life. Crime follows. Increased theft comes with a lack of jobs. Volent defense increases against the increased theft. Throw in the increase in dealing with illicit items and drugs. Of course poverty leads to more crime including gun violence.

    • The question follows: What is the best way to reintroduce responsible armed citizenry to these places?

      • ‘Responsible armed citizenry’ *begins* with responsible parenting.

        IE, “No, you can’t go out as late as you want. Sit your ass down and finish that homework. Your ass is *grounded* and you can’t have that damn iPhone until your grades come up.”

        Blatantly racist things like that…

      • I can think of several ways to reintroduce “responsible armed citizenry”. 1, teach gun safety in school. Abstinence is a retarded form of teaching about potentially harmful things like sex, drugs, alcohol, guns. Teach kids how to be safe and there will be fewer accidents. 2, elect government officials who don’t try to demonize guns. If you’re a law abiding citizen and it’s the gangbangers who have guns while your elected officials try to disarm you and demonize guns… of course your opinion is going to be different than if you’re in the country were your neighbors are all responsible gun owners. 3, enable businesses to protect themselves through guns.

        If more kids know how to be safe around guns and more good, responsible people have guns and would be gangbangers fear to get shot while rioting, robbing ect then attitudes towards guns will change.

        There is a vicious cycle where poverty leads to crime which makes it more difficult for people to open honest businesses which leads to move poverty. That ends that when businesses aren’t afraid of being robbed because it’s the wannabe thugs who are afraid.

    • stupidity and/or incompetence is the root cause of a probably the majority of poverty in America.

      Incompetence might be fixable, but stupidity is highly resistant to government intervention!

  15. It is far more complicated than just saying “does poverty cause gun violence?” But I certainly believe it is a contributing factor in many instances.

  16. Nope…today they interviewed people on Michigan Ave.(The Magnificent Mile) after lowlife thugs crashed through a store and robbed it.A gal stated “lack of education and opportunity” was the reason…duh. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked”. I’ve been broke and didn’t rob anyone. It’s pretty funny watching folks talk about how safe they are or whine “it’s never happened before” after conveniently forgetting the teen gangs roaming in nice weather(wilding)…

    • The deeper question is, what causes the lack of education and opportunity? It certainly is not caused by a lack of government spending.

      IMO, the root cause is stupidity and incompetence.

      The stupid and incompetent are the first to turn to crime and crimes of violence.

  17. A lot of ghetto violence is comprised of power struggles over resources; namely, gangs competing over drug distribution, etc.

    BUT, people struggle over resources in nearly every walk of life, from sale reps competing to sell their products to politicians competing for votes. These struggles usually don’t involve murdering the competition.

    Only in the dumbest and most incompetent segments of society does the struggle over resources result in so much violence over such pitiful resources. The average gang member LIVES WITH HIS MOTHER, and makes a pretty sparse living for facing so much risk of death.

    • “Stupidity and Incompetence” are ill-defined and symptoms, not root causes, of an issue.

      Also, I would argue a good amount of violent criminals are neither stupid nor incompetent. Just look at the scope and power of the drug cartels down south…

  18. The root of both violence and poverty is fatherlessness and the resulting lack of moral foundation. Young men and women with a single parent, no matter how conscientious, are far more likely to be poor and to be prone to violence (and yes the women are often as dysfunctional and violent as the men). In a time not long past, black America had a rate of single-parent households lower than white America, and blacks were uniformly better educated and wealthier than we are now. Blacks were social and economic conservatives who valued hard work. Now we are at the bottom of the pack in terms of dual-parent, nuclear families, and we have one of the lowest average living standards in the country. This was all brought about in a couple of generations by the welfare state and its deleterious effects on the black family.

    • This is actually a pretty good argument for decriminalization of various stuff. Marijuana is the easiest example, but one way or another you find yourself in a self-perpetuating cycle wherein men without father figures knock some likewise-fatherless women up, go to jail, and the next generation is raised fatherless as well.

      All the while, the media is trying to eradicate the belief that a two-parent family adds value, so some other people enter the same situation by choice.

      Either way, the only thing I really want to see government do to reduce the problem is reduce the number of parents it removes from society, one way or another. The private sector, education, religion, media, etc can handle other aspects of the problem (if one, indeed, exists, given how much violent crime has gone down over the last 30 years).

    • Send a ‘thank you’ card to LBJ & the Dumbass Dumpocrat Party. The so called ‘war on poverty’ created much more poverty.

  19. Simple question. Any simple and singular answer is likely to be wrong.

    Poverty is relative; we live in one of the richest societies in human history and even our poor people have better educational opportunities, nutrition and living conditions than most humans who ever lived prior to now.

    What is often called “poverty” I see is a combination of factors, including but not limited to lack of support and encouragement to get a good education; lack of good role models; lack of any sort of self-discipline (aka bad parenting); overcrowding; “boredom” (for lack of a better word) and disincentive to self-educate or otherwise do something constructive with your time.

    No matter how much money you have, this combination rarely yields good results; look at Paris Hilton (admittedly not with all factors, but still).

  20. “There are too many people living in the desperation of poverty.” I don’t know what that means. It implies that poverty is so crushing that people are going without basic needs. There are government programs to get you housing (including air conditioning and clean running water), food, and even cell phones.

    “… and too many of them who feel they have nothing to live for.” Find something, God, family, a job, fandom, self-improvement.

    “And when people have too much idle time on their hands to do nothing but think about how bad things are, many will be driven to violence.” “Idle hands are the are the devil’s tools” as the saying goes, especially if you’re nursing a grievance. Also, get a library card and read a book. There, you have something to do now that is free, entertaining, and leads to self-improvement.

    So, it’s not poverty, but poverty and having nothing to do while feeling entitled to other people’s stuff. If someone is in poverty, but working to take care of themselves, then they don’t have time for “gun violence.” If someone is in poverty, but isn’t covetous, they have no need of violence.

    • There’s an important factor you missed: dignity. And that has a close relationship to this:

      “There are government programs to get you housing (including air conditioning and clean running water), food, and even cell phones.”

      Programs in a couple of cities which did away with a whole array of government anti-poverty programs and instead of making the needy jump through hoops monthly to keep their support just handed out apartments to the homeless and checks to all the needy resulted in lowered drug use and lowered crime. One aspect noted as a major change for those people was their renewed sense of dignity.

      How does that work? They were no longer treated on a regular basis as beggars having to prove they were worth something. Regardless of how many public servants treated them as human beings, the process itself was degrading to many, and being relieved of the indignity of the process let them lift up their heads and learn to stand tall.

      My favorite example of this had all the experts saying if you just give them housing and money they’ll buy drugs and ruin the housing, but the opposite turned out to be the case. Sure, there were exceptions, but for the most part once the desperation of not knowing if they’d have a place to sleep or where their next meal was coming from gave confidence in the future, to the point that some of those who were formerly a drag on society started their own businesses!

      Cities which have tried this have also found out that once they don’t have to pay bureaucrats to serve as “case workers” and such, just handing out the housing and monthly checks saved them money, making the approach a double win.

  21. It doesn’t matter if it “doesn’t make sense” to him. Few things in life are so simple. Sure, poverty certainly never, or at least incredibly rarely, has directly been the cause of someone killing someone else, but impoverished communities are more likely to suffer from a whole host of issues, and the gang activity and corresponding drug trade certainly fuel much of the violence in poor communities in our country.

  22. It also never hurts to know who’s yo Daddy . A strong parental unit (as in both parents) is a critical factor in raising children properly. The decline of the American way, value of all lives, has decreased so badly since LBJ gave us his “wisdom” in the ’60’s.
    And btw, nice way to dress for the funeral…….

  25. There are lots of examples both in the USA and abroad of poor and impoverished people living with very low violent crime. The only financial correlation (not cause) that seems to be true is the presence of inequality. I don’t have links to the statistics but speakers like Jordan Peterson and Stephan Molyneux discuss the Gini Coefficient in great detail and provide links and searchable attribution in their videos and papers. This only proves lack of correlation which eliminates poverty as the cause.

    So no. Poverty does not cause violent crime even though it is often present.

  26. There would be less poverty if 19 year old women with no job, no money and no education didn’t have multiple children with multiple men they weren’t married to because those kids grow up often to be criminals because they grow up in neighborhoods with similar kids who only value nba 2k and rap music and never go to college…

  28. As other posters above have noted, I’m having a hard time even figuring out what poverty means in this country. I’ve been all over the world, and this is the only country I’ve seen where people living in poverty are too fat to get out of the chair in front of their TV.

    • Poverty and poor are a relative thing, in my opinion. Being poor has nothing to do with how much you have. It has everything to do with how much you have compared to “everyone else.”

      The Federal Poverty Level is $12,060 for individuals and goes up about $4,000 per person in a household. Government assistance is not counted. That is how most studies, surveys, etc. determine how many people in America are poor, living in poverty, etc.

      If we included the value of government assistance in our metric, I’d debt we would have much in the way of poverty in America.

    • ” I’ve been all over the world, and this is the only country I’ve seen where people living in poverty are too fat to get out of the chair in front of their TV.”

      Peggy Noonan (speechwriter for Reagan, she wrote the famous Normandy “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs…” speech, along with the ‘Challenger’ tragedy speech.) was having lunch in the White House cafateria with a guest from Africa who was in America for the first time. She asked him what was particularly remarkable he had seen so far.

      She said he had a look on his face of stark amazement when he told her – “Your poor… are FAT!”…

      • One reason that so many poor are fat is that in too many states food stamps can be used to buy things like Twinkies, sugar donuts, Pepsi or Coke — i.e. junk food.

    • That’s an important point. There’s a high correlation between obesity and “poverty” in the U.S. In other parts of the world, poor people obviously don’t have an abundance of rations.

      I should have compassion for the poor. But that’s difficult when they always seem to have money for beer, cigarettes and pizza, then complain that they can’t afford to buy school supplies or shoes for their kids.

      • Don’t forget Lottery Tickets in addition to the beer & cigs. Have seen shopping carts piled high with nothing but beer pushed by degenerate looking people. Sick & tired of hearing about the poor children: nothing to eat, etc, etc, etc, etc. Don’t make the damn things if you can’t afford them. The food, clothing, etc drives get nothing from me. If you are so dumb ass stupid to squander your $ on crap, don’t come crying to me. Of course these kids are pretty much damned to be like their useless parents.

  29. I think poverty is a factor. It’s more complicated though, than simply saying being poor causes one to become violent. I do know that, in general, crime is higher in poverty stricken areas. Is this because poverty causes violence? Or is it that the people that tend to be violent are more prone to being less educated or have a lesser work ethic than more affluent folks? I don’t know, I haven’t studied it extensively. But I think it’s all connected.

  30. Having people with low morals and brain capacity is what gets you violence.
    That those people also aren’t the best employees is quite obvious.

  31. A failed law enforcement and justice system is the primary cause of out-of-control gun violence.

    Poverty is not a root cause. If it was, Appalachia and other poor rural areas would be suffering from severe gun violence like Chicago. The rural poor seem to have a disposition towards suicide via narcotics instead.

    Possibly the combination of poverty, living in the inner city, and poor government is the cause. Chicago is an example of failed government. Most major cities have at least somewhat dysfunctional governments but in Chicago, it is extreme because the gangs have the politicians and judges bought.

    • There’s an urban planning approach that as far as I know has never been tested that in part was meant to reduce crime by reducing crowding. The idea was to have a number of cities with populations less than 100k instead of the horrid density of cities of a million or more. The cities would be spread out, at least twenty-five kilometers apart (it was a European who conceived this) and have one in five city blocks be parks, to supply plenty of green space accessible to everyone. One result would be the elimination of anything resembling today’s inner-city conditions, and that’s where the major crime reduction would come from; access to green spaces supposedly would help as well.

      To me one of the greater benefits would be that gun ownership per capita tends to be higher in smaller communities, so more of the populace would likely be armed — and that, too, would help reduce crime.

  32. Once again the incorrect term “Gun Violence” is intentionally used. I am under the impression that the authors of these articles are very knowledgeable about ‘guns’ and ‘gun culture’ –yet, repeatedly the term “Gun Violence” is used by TTAG authors and members/subscribers.

    There is no such thing as “Gun Violence”

    I have never read (red) the term ‘knife violence’, ‘car/truck violence’, ‘baseball-bat violence’ and the like, but the aforementioned does take place very often. For the most part, outside of ‘defensive gun use’ (DGU) and hunting (for food), –‘violence with a gun’ as a whole– is a mental health concern and/or issue.

    There is no such thing as “Gun Violence”

    A firearm does not pull its own trigger. Please post your opinions …. (BELOW) ….

    • I agree that the term “gun violence” should be avoided because it is a gun-controller construct. I think there is a tendency to use “gun violence” because “crimes committed with a firearm” is a bit is too long.

      The concept of “‘violence with a gun’ as a whole– is a mental health concern and/or issue.” plays into the “gun violence is a public health issue” meme that the gun controllers want because they believe they can then use the same tactics deployed against smoking to eliminate firearms by high taxes and additional restrictions.

    • I’ve been saying that for years now, but it’s like many people can’t get their head around the concept. The term/phrase “gun Violence” is false narrative as well as being a misnomer.
      I’m wondering if they think of it in this way.
      post image

      • At this point I would ask TTAG authors, as well as the TTAG regulars to –please stop using the term “Gun Violence”–. Also, as a training/educational tactic, to make clear to future posters, who use the incorrect term of “Gun Violence”,

        “Just Thought I’d Leave This Here”

  33. anyone else notice the “classy/respectful” attire of the funeral attendees? disgraceful.

    • As was the case when I lived in inner cities (twice), I presumed the folks in the picture couldn’t afford nice clothes. OTOH, from my experience in one of those inner cities, that isn’t necessarily a barrier: at one inner-city church, two businessmen donated several thousand dollars worth of dress suits for the explicit purpose that on formal occasions such as funerals the participants could rent the clothes (for less than a McDonalds meal).

  34. Poverty is a cycle hard to break. Some poor people take the easy way out and resort to crime. Criminals use gun violence. Funny the % of criminals in prison from poor backgrounds, but it was a choice, not preordained destiny.

  35. Really? No. Everyone knows guns cause gun violence. Just like machetes cause machete violence and credit cards cause credit card fraud and identities cause identity theft, etc. If we just gave up our guns, machetes, credit cards and identities we’d all be living in a crime free utopia. Everyone knows that.

  36. So, rich criminals don’t commit violent crimes? Pardon me while I laugh my ass off.

    Walker should be concerned about the corrosive inner glorified city culture of violence that is murdering his people. It even affects rich dudes, like Aaron Hernandez.

    • That was an incredible video; so much truth is spoken, but I wonder how much fell on deaf ears with prejudiced minds in between them.

    • Superb presentation!

      It’s a great illustration of why we need the long-ago-proposed “common language” amendment to the Constitution, which would specify that the Constitution is to be treated as ordinary language.

  38. Violent street crime has its origins in the “culture” of the people who commit the crime. There are plenty of low-income people in China Town (NYC), but relatively little street crime committed by Asians. Why? It’s just not part of their culture. They have better things to do with their time like make money and help their kids with their homework.

  39. The poorest regions of Appalachia, which make up some of the poorest counties in the nation, also have violent crime rates well below national average. The residents are also overwhelmingly white.

    • And…apparently this has already been mentioned multiple times, because I didn’t read all the comments before posting. As usual.

  41. shop.
    I blame schools cutting shop. used to be even if you sucked at English, history, science and math, you could still earn a living learning a trade for free in high school. Mechanic, wood working, welding.. smart hands meant you could still get out, get a job. sad really..

  42. Both my parents grew up in houses without indoor plumbing. They and everyone else around them were dirt poor. In their communities, people turned TO each other, not ON each other. That is the difference.

  45. Yes and no. There is a causal relationship between poverty and violence, but it isn’t a simple one. Poor areas are not universally violent. The Appalachian poor, for example, have much lower rates of violence than poor people in the inner cities. You can attribute that two main causes.

    1. Lack of despair. People are generally employed and supporting themselves, even if they are on a subsistence level. They have families and communities that support them. They don’t have a boatload of ratfink politicians telling them they are the victims of an oppressive system that is keeping them poor.

    2. Relative lack of drugs and gangs, compared to inner cities. A large segment of the inner city poor have turned to the illegal drug trade as a means of supporting themselves. Gangs and gang violence are part of that deal. They fight constantly over turf to increase their own power and profits. All poor communities have drug problems to some degree, but it’s when a gang culture takes over that things really go down the crapper.

    In short, the inner city poor have a toxic cocktail of several blights that lead down the path to violence. The left and their media lapdogs seek to exploit this to gain power. Thus we constantly hear about the violence in Chicago, and the media never talk about the relative lack of crime among other impoverished populations because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

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