chicago-gang-banger

“Young people are dying on our streets because too many legislators will not take a stand against the powerful gun lobby,” chicago.suntimes.com columnist Mary Mitchell writes. “Gang activity is undesirable, but it is not killing young people. The easy access to lethal weapons is.” Ms. Mitchell’s article ‘Gang-related’ classification for gun deaths a cop-out is a major WTF moment. Of course Chicago gangs are to blame the Windy City’s horrific levels of “gun violence.” In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control reported that gang homicides accounted for roughly 8,900 of 11,100 firearms-related homicides.

America doesn’t have a gun problem. We have a gang problem. We shouldn’t be waging a War on Drugs or, as the left-leaning media would have it, a War on Guns. We should be fighting a War on Gangs. Which would necessitate a large number of initiatives, from jailing gang bangers (for real) to legalizing drugs to replacing our public school system with a voucher program to offering inner city youth credible alternatives to gang affiliation.

Given the outcry against “gun violence” and its source, given that both pro- and anti-gun rights advocates abhor violent crime, why isn’t a War on Gangs on the media radar or the political agenda?

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125 COMMENTS

  2. Because it would be racist. Duh!
    Also, gang crime is mostly limited to the poor minority neighborhoods of big cities, so it’s not a driving issue with the middle class, who elect the politicians, or the upper class, who pay for them.

  3. A war on gangs isn’t PC. It would be spun by the media as “racist”, because gangs are predominantly made up of minorities.

  4. Vouchers? hahahaha. Charter schools are as big a scam as Obamacare or for profit prisons. Just another way to divert taxpayer’s money into private pockets.

    • drew…charter schools are simply public schools operated by private companies..they are “public schools”. many proposed “voucher” programs would be able to be used for traditional private “prep” or parochial schools that do not utilize the standardized curriculum or teaching methods (but are subject to minimum state progress verification). I think vouchers should be the norm…if you are paying 10k a year in property taxes, you should have decent schools to send your children to…if they cant provide that, then give some of it back to the tax payer in the form of a voucher if they are not using the public option.

      the ironic thing..here, they are exploring giving vouchers to low income people that dont even pay property taxes to begin with….go figure.

      • More and more government giveaways are “means tested”, which translates to they are only available to those who pay no taxes. That is, in fact, the only real qualification required, since the entire idea is to redistribute somebody else’s wealth (not your own, obviously!). It is curious how no one mentions that during election years, since both sides intend to do it. Just remember, if we reward people for being unemployed, we will have more people unemployed. If we punish people for paying taxes, we will have fewer people paying taxes.

        Vote Trump, before it’s too late!

    • Actually, most government services are provided through private sector contractors. Roads, bridges and buildings are built by private contractors. Health care, foster care for children, you name it. Gov buys from, or contracts with, the private sector. While this method is sometimes plagued with “pay to play” corruption, it has, overall, proven to be much more efficient than enterprises that are wholly owned and managed by government.

      Schools and law enforcement are among the few services provided by tax dollars that aren’t normally farmed out to the private sector. While this method is sometimes plagued by “pay to play” corruption, it has, overall, proven to be much more efficient than enterprises that are wholly owned and managed by government.

      There is nothing wrong with public funds going to private companies, as long as they actually provide what they are paid for.

      • You’re right on the money, though I think you just shot yourself in the head with the last sentence. There is something wrong with public money itself. Forcing people to hand over their money is never justified Biblically except in a case of restitution. Taxes are slavery, as the government is saying to all taxpayers, “We have a legal claim on your labor, your means of work, that is, you yourself.” The state thinks this because it thinks it’s God. “You didn’t build that, everything you have is from above.”

        If tax-funded services are so good and necessary for life or well-being, why not let the buyer vote with his wealth? Wouldn’t that be a perfect fix for money actually going to what it was paid for?

        Apply these things, and you’ll be a truly great person, able to influence and bless people for generations.

    • Public schools are the real money wasters.
      The school district in my city has 60% administrators to 40% teachers.
      Little wonder it has terrible ratings and many recent graduates cannot read or write..

  6. This lady is an absolute moron. They say it’s safer to walk down the streets of Afghanistan being a white Anglo-Saxon man American then walking down the street in Chicago. The reason for this is because they have actual patrols of so-called turf buy arms gang members riding 426 people deep in a vehicle with AK-47 clearly visible out the windows. They called this tactic patrolling their turf I saw a ridiculous news report where some moron liberal media so-called professional went down and did an interview with all these gang members and why they did this and what the purpose was and so on. What I found pretty interesting though was the fact that they are directly working for Mexican cartels. And it doesn’t seem to matter which game they interviewed they all made references to Mexican cartel supplying them with mass amounts of illegal narcotics for them to sell so that they can poison their community and make thousands upon thousands of dollars to buy illegal weapons which they’re not even legally able to possess because they’ve got a rap sheet as long as your arm. What needs to be done is we need to keep the Mexican cartels out of our country and eliminate these gangs just round them up they are Waging War on our cities our streets our citizens and our police officers time to pull the so-called trump card and just lock them up get them if they’re wearing gang colors gang tattoos they automatically get a 15 year sentence with Rehabilitation mandatory education and a trade must be learned or some type of college schooling past while in the penitentiary get this gang life out of them by any means necessary. Chicago’s politicians and mayor and governor for that matter of the state have given up on that City and it’s clear very clear to the general public that lives in Chicago and very clear to the populace of the United States we know what’s wrong they’re letting gangs take over their entire city. Just like the governor or the mayor or rather saying this lady is an absolute moron. They say it’s safer to walk down the streets of Afghanistan being a white Anglo Saxon man American then walking down the street in Chicago. The reason for this is because they have actual patrols of so-called turf by armed gang members riding four to six people deep in a vehicle with AK 47 clearly visible all the windows. They call this tactic patrolling there turf I saw a ridiculous news report wear some more on liberal media so-called professional went down and didn’t interview with all these gang members and why they did this and what the purpose was and so on. What I found pretty interesting though was the fact that they are directly working for Mexican cartel spirit and it doesn’t seem to matter which gang they interviewed they all made references to Mexican cartel supplying them with mass amounts of it legal narcotics for them to sell so that they can poison there community and make thousands upon thousands of dollars to buy a legal weapons which they’re not even legally able to possess because I’ve got a rap sheet as long as your arm. What needs to be done is we need to keep the Mexican cartel out of our country and eliminate these games just random up they are waiting war on our cities are streets are citizens and are police officers time to pull the so-called trump card and just lock, get them if they’re wearing gang colors gang tattoos they automatically get a 15 years sentence with rehabilitation mandatory education and a trade must be learned or some type of college schooling past while in the penitentiary get this gang life out of them by any means necessary. Chicago’s politicians and mayor and governor for that matter of the state have given up on that city and it’s clear very clear to the general public that lives in Chicago and very clear to the populous of the United States we know what’s wrong they’re letting gangs take over their entire city. Just like the governor or the mayor rather saying too if they’re going to get into a gunfight to take it to the back alley instead of the streets were kids and pedestrians are walking I was like what you said your to go ahead and commit murder just do it in the alleyway so nobody gets hurt are you ridiculous how about locking their ass up for 25 years how about that one.

    • A few periods and a tish of grammar would have allowed me to finish your rant. Other than the police state idea of gang colors = 15 years. I love the idea of sending Americans to get better educations.

      • Thank you very much for the grammar lesson sir. I tried to go in and edit the message and for some reason it didn’t save it correctly and it duplicated parts of my so-called rant. Sorry to offend you I lost my left eye and part of my right eyes Vision serving our wonderful country in Afghanistan from an IED explosion and use voice text to post these messages and participate with you all.

        • It’s difficult to convey your thoughts in a monolithic block of text. It will be harder for you to break text up into a readable fashion, but if you want others to be able to read and understand what you wrote, then you need something other than a block of text.

          It was hard for me to finish reading what you wrote, and it will be hard for anyone. Obviously, you care about what you wrote, otherwise you wouldn’t have taken the time to write it, so please don’t be offended by suggestions that improve the ability to communicate your thoughts.

        • Dave, part of the problem was that it double posted your comment, so one long block of text became one really long block of text.

          Thank you for your service, though, and for posting here. Knowing your injuries and the difficulties you face, I think other readers are willing to cut you slack.

          Perhaps you just need to say “period” more often to break up your sentences. Or whatever you say to start a new paragraph.

        • No, my apologies. I lost most a good bit of hearing in Afghanistan. If I’m not lookong right at somebody most of what they say gets pretty muffled.

      • But read into the article. The gangs can bring out the vote. Or do you suggest everyone who is in any way connect to gangs not be allowed to vote. Should we just suspend voting in high crime neighborhoods? I think the cure is going to be worse than the disease.

        • First off gang members very rarely vote. Second these gang members are very well known to the local law enforcement due to the fact that they are in and out of the system like a revolving door rap sheets as long as your arm as I said before very well known to the local PD. In these low-income neighborhoods there is a very small percentage of these types of people who participate in Gangland Warfare. The neighborhood is primarily full of good hard-working Americans. Who are plagued by these cancerous viruses of games that are pushing narcotics which are fueling the war that they have and commit on each other. Just like the Center for Disease Control statistics prove if you look at the homicide rate and the percentages committed by law-abiding citizens and police departments vs The Gang killings that happened sometimes two and three a day in Chicago there is no comparison. These neighborhoods know who these people are and their numbers are not greater than the good citizens that have to live with these small groups of gang individuals. I’m not saying turn the state into a police state by no means I’m simply saying we know who these people are they’re constantly being arrested and not prosecuted in plea-bargained down until they commit a horrific mass murder or something and then it hits front page Media news and then they actually throw the book at him finally. This has a lot to do with the prosecutors in Chicago not wanting to tarnish their conviction rates so that they can be reelected when in turn they are the problem themselves by not Prosecuting these people on their feet and 6 and sometimes 10th and 12th offense being a violent crime and these people are getting probation infans. That’s just not how to run the justice system in Chicago or anywhere.

        • Dave, please read the linked article:
          “A Latin King, interviewed at Cook County Jail.. He estimates that the gang delivered hundreds of votes, maybe even a thousand or more…. Moreover, he says, members were also directed—under the threat of punishment—to pass out campaign flyers…. They were instructed to wear their Sunday best: ties, khakis, trench coats.“No thug clothes””

        • It’s a common misconception that felons lose the right to vote, some do and some don’t, it depends on the laws of the state. ALL felons lose the right of keeping and bearing arms unless they go through the process to get them restored, which may or may not be successful. In Illinois, felons CAN vote. In Chicago, the gang/felon population is a political force in and of themselves. That’s what the article is showing.

          My own personal opinions on the subject(s):
          If you don’t work, you don’t eat.
          Charity is a gift, not an entitlement.
          Voting should be only for land owners (skin in the game and all).
          If someone who has control of their faculties cannot be trusted with a firearm, they should be incarcerated or executed.

  8. Because they are armed and dangerous.

    Easier to pick up bodies and wring hands over “gun violence”.

    Seems like the police have a much harder time figuring out what to do when someone defends themselves against violence with a gun. They want to charge somebody for something.

    When civilians protect themselves, the authorities don’t have a form for that.

  9. “replacing our public school system with a voucher” is not going to work. And I will tell you why.

    The reason the private schools in Chicago do so well is that the families that send the kids there are willing and ABLE to invest their time and resources into ensuring their kids get a good education. How exactly does vouches accomplish the same thing?

    The reason the public schools in Chicago North West Suburbs are so good, is for the same reason, the families that send the kids there are willing and ABLE to invest their time and resources into ensuring their kids get a good education.

    • Agreed, no school system works without buy-in and involvement from the parents. Whether it’s volunteering to help at school functions, contributing monetarily to fundraisers, or simplest of all, actually making sure you kids are doing their assigned work, they parent’s bare as much responsibility as the schools. Except most of these parents use school as a pseudo daycare to keep their kids out of the house while they loaf around on the couch….just saying….

  10. Currently “gangs” encompass too many variables often complex socio-economic ones.

    “Guns” is a simple target and message tailor made for political pandering to the uninformed.

    Eventually, after the guns are banned the knives dulled and a guaranteed income is instituted maybe “gangs” will get some attention but until then they’ll pick off the limbs before even acknowledging the body exists each pundit and politician hoping to make bank and die before their chosen cause goes away.

  11. End the notion that prohibiting things can make people moral. Prohibiting drugs only creates a ripe market for smugglers. Prohibiting firearms allows them to remain in business because they already have the will to break the law. Remove the illicit market and they will all have to go and get a job.

    • But look at the disaster people get in with alcohol, can you really imagine what a mess it would be is herein became socially acceptable or even tolerated.

      • Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 so we have a very good idea what will happen. It’s a 15-year case study of a population of 10 million people. Heroin overdose rates dropped to zero. Hard drug usage rates decreased. Infectious disease transmission rates decreased. Recreational use of marijuana increased.

        • Portugal basically took the junkies and put them on the dole. If you are good with that then great. To be honest, I’m good with it too. Now if we could just convince everyone else.

        • junkies in prison are also fed and housed with public money, i.e. on the dole. it shouldn’t be difficult to persuade now that we have a long-term example.. and yet it is very difficult. terribly vexing.

        • A case can be made that every human population has about the same “carrying capacity” of people who are prone to drug addiction. Those societies which are tolerant of drug users and those societies which are prohibitionist all tend to have the same percentages of drug users. If people just want to get high, let ’em. Some of those will go on to ruin their lives with drugs and, when they do, that has to be their problem and not society’s. The idea that more and/or different kinds of government intervention will halt drug “abuse” is a fantasy.

        • England added addiction to what is covered by national medical care. It has not reduced criminal or gang activities. In fact, according to law enforcement in England, and Australia, crime problems are climbing even after a period of decline. Gangs in both places continue as before, and the use of firearms is escalating.

          The “progressives” have always claimed that problems can be fixed as long as the public is led to believe that the goal is “public safety” or “public welfare”. That was the excuse used for Prohibition, for the National Firearms Act, ait is the same excuse they use today. Take away all the guns and society will be safer. They depend on the public being duped into feeling secure, and that criminals will no longer use firearms. Such has not been the case in England, Australia, Canada, Japan, etc. Gangs still exist, and firearms are still used by criminals.

        • We have had laws in the US prohibiting essentially all drugs since the ’60s, over 50 years now. And you can buy any drug you wish anywhere in America, so WTF are those laws accomplishing? Let’s repeal *all* of them for a test period of 10 years, and see what the result is compared to the past 50 years.

          Responding to the discussion of Portugal, it strikes me that making certain that everyone knows there are no free drugs in prison might make more people attempt to avoid prison.

      • Drunks are obnoxious, brave and prone to outbursts.
        Junkies are comatose.
        If anything we need way more needle sticking junkies in this country.
        Ban narcan and stop resuscitating OD’s and watch the problem disappear.

        • A Cop point of view…. Drunks come in all flavors. There are crying in their beer drunks, fighting drunks, and everything in between.

          Drugs users also come in all flavors. In their case it depends more on what they are using than their own personalities.
          Marijuana users rarely display any resistance unless the weed is laced. Heroin users are pretty much the same. Crack users are paranoid and subject to violent responses. PCP users are totally unconnected and can and do show immense strength and delusion induced violence. (One of my best friends was the backup in an LA case involving a shrimpy guy who threw cops around and over a patrol car. He got the last one in a bear hug and took IIRC 5 rounds point blank before he was subdued. LSD users are “usually” laid back, unless they get a bad trip. Then you don’t know what they see or how they will react.

  12. Why no war on gangs?

    Because then “the blame” would be on people, not things.

    We would then have to admit that some people are bad, and that all life choices aren’t equally valid and good. And just like that we’re in West Side Story.

  14. Because it’s racist and guilty white liberals somehow feel they are to blame for factors contributing to gang membership.

  15. Democrats cannot wage war on their own shock troops. That’s why there’s no war on gangs.

    Democrats work for the gangs, and the gangs work for the Democrats. In fact, they are indistinguishable, except that the gangs steal less.

  16. It has, but it’s been prosecuted amongst the participants. It serves a bigger need. Kinda the way the Clinton Foundation did Haiti.

  17. My favorite quote from that article:

    “Calling a fatal shooting “gang-related” suggests that the victim somehow deserved to be gunned down and nothing could be done.”

    Well yeah, it suggests it because its true. If they are in a gang killing other people and selling drugs, there is very little you can do to keep them from being killed.

    • And second favorite:

      “The first questions people ask when teens are killed under these circumstances is why were they on the street at 3:15 a.m. — and if the shooting was gang-related?
      Obviously, there’s no good reason for 17-year-olds to be out at that time of the morning. But a lot of us made similarly reckless choices in our youth and weren’t gunned down.”

      I was a pretty dumb 17 year old, but I never made the choice to go walk down the street of a major city known for crime at 3:15 a.m. with a group of known (documented by police) gang members.

      • I have yet to find a reporter who said they were not connect to gangs. If anyone has a link I would love to see it.

        • The article says “Police said the twins weren’t documented gang members, although individuals who were with them were affiliated with a gang”

          So they weren’t in the system, but were hanging out with people who were. How’s the saying go? Avoid stupid people in stupid places (and stupid times) doing stupid things. Check, check, and check.

  18. Because, admitting that the root cause of all this death and destruction is a people problem instead of an implement problem, would be an admission of failure for the decades of time and trillions of dollars thrown at the very same people causing most of this problem.

    Ain’t gonna happen, Cap’n.

  19. Ask a Chicago politician.

    To paraphrase a Chicago “community organizer” from a past era:

    “You can get more with a ‘get out the vote… OR ELSE’ campaign than you can with a “get out the vote” alone campaign.

    The Democrat party is deep in bed with the gangs. They would no more prosecute them, than Hitler would prosecute the SA before the Night of the Long Knives. They’re still useful to them.

  20. Well that’s easy. Because the Clinton’s pretty much made these gang problems with their crime bill.

  21. Perhaps it is because people realize that when America starts a “war on X” the X often gets worse. If we would stop the war on drugs, perhaps we would not need a war on gangs.

    Oh, and, as has been said earlier, because gang violence usually ends up being minority on minority, so most Americans do not care. If the increased number of killing that are happening in some of our larger cities involved middle-class whites, there would be a demand that “something” must be done.

    • There has been a demand to do something for a very long time. It’s not that most people don’t care, it’s that gangs are a very difficult problem to solve.So far we have tried:
      1. Gun control (doesn’t work)
      2. War on Drugs (doesn’t work)
      3. Longer prison sentences (doesn’t work)
      4. Targeting “super predators” (doesn’t work)
      5. Giving ever more money to urban schools (doesn’t work)

      What it comes down to is that nobody in politics has the guts to address the real problems. First, we have to figure out how to create jobs for millions of unskilled people. Sending everyone to college sounds nice in campaign speeches, but it’s never going to happen. We need real solutions to address poverty that don’t involve billions in government giveaways. Second, the urban poor have to own up to the problems in their community and address them. When you refuse to help the police who are investigating shots fired, you help the gangs. When you raise children to believe that the system is stacked against them and will keep them from getting anywhere, you are predisposing them to join gangs, because how else will they survive? Urban communities need to stop sheltering the gangs that live among them, and they need to encourage their children to reach higher.

  23. Because every time the government has launched a “war on X” it has been an unmitigated disaster.

    Because freedom of association still exists, for now, in spite of the law-and-order fetishists feverish attempts to destroy it.

    Because a lot of gangsters wear badges.

  24. “…The easy access to lethal weapons is.”

    You mean knives, sticks, rocks, hands, and feet? Yeah ban that shit.

    Groups of people have been killing other groups of people since before the Bronze age. It aint the tools.

  26. 1. Progressives do not believe that people bear responsibility for anything. Fault always lies with inanimate objects or nebulous ideas: guns, alcohol, tobacco, cars, companies, systems, etc.
    2. According to Progressive “logic”, a war on gangs would be racist. We all know that poor minorities account for the majority of gang members. Any action that targets gangs would by default target this minority subgroup. If you take any action that has negative consequences for people who happen to be a minority, then you are a racist.
    3. Progressives are stupid enough to actually believe that guns are the problem. If there were no guns, nobody would be shot. It’s that simple for their simplistic minds.

  29. Clearly, some people have little sense of history involving gangs in the USA. There were times when “gangs” met in the streets armed with baseball bats, knives, chains, etc. No guns. Such events happened in the ghetto areas of our major cities. The gangs were comprised of ethnic groups divided up into gangs as is seen today in places like Oakland where Hispanic gangs have divided up the city (division maps are available online). One example is known as The Zoot Suit Riots when a series of racial attacks in 1943 in Los Angeles, California, United States, between Mexican American youths and European American servicemen stationed in Southern California. White servicemen and civilians attacked Mexican youths who wore zoot suits because they were considered unpatriotic and luxurious during wartime, in which rationing was required for the World War II war effort. While most of the violence was toward the Mexican youth, young African American and Filipino/Filipino Americans were attacked as well because they also sported zoot suits. The Zoot Suit Riots were related to fears and hostilities aroused by the coverage of the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, following the killing of a young Latino man in a barrio near Los Angeles. The riot appeared to trigger similar attacks that year against Latinos in Chicago, San Diego, Oakland, Evansville, Philadelphia, and New York City.

    “Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiter they could find. Pushing its way into the important motion picture theaters, the mob ordered the management to turn on the house lights and then ran up and down the aisles dragging Mexicans out of their seats. Streetcars were halted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked from their seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic frenzy”
    – Carey McWilliams, journalist

    Aside from law enforcement, and some USN Shore Patrolmen, it appears that guns were not involved. Still, many people were seriously injured.

  30. You’re promoting yet another “War on…” something? Thanks but no thanks.
    If you want to do something about the gang problem, do something that changes or diminishes the bad traits but builds on the good traits. Do something that makes other options more attractive. But don’t declare another war.

    By the way, we do have a gun problem. There’s not enough of them in the right hands, at the right place, at the right time.

  31. @Robert Farago

    Its a very interesting question.

    First of all, there are widespread misconceptions about the ways that modern gangs work. There actually WAS a massive War On Gangs in the 1990’s, and it succeeded at least so far as dismantling the major national central gang leadership infrastructure. But what people don’t realize about gangs is that dealing with them is more akin to dealing with communities that subscribe to a fundamentalist religion than it is to dealing with maybe a corporation that is committing fraud. You shut down the corporation and you put the key people in jail and that’s it, its over. Everyone moves on. You shut down a gang and put its key people in jail… and its not like any of the people have any other economic prospects. Its not like their kids haven’t been socialized since birth to see gang membership as a part of their identity and what they are expected to do. The gang lifestyle and culture is still 100% there, the only difference is that the organization has become more haphazard. Individual gangs might only number a few dozen members and span a few blocks. But in Chicago alone there are HUNDREDS of individual gangs. They operate like terrorist cells, completely independently from each other, with minimal and constantly shifting coordination between them. Trying to end gang culture and the gang lifestyle is like trying to end Islamism… good luck.

    Second of all, I think that America, certainly the political left, is tired of “wars on…” period. They have come to believe that “The War On X” is a trite propaganda term that has often been used to hide inefficient and ineffective policy. The most notable non-war Wars On are “The War on Drugs” and “The War on Terror”, and in both cases the phrases turned out to be predictably meaningless and the endeavors themselves have been unmitigated disasters.

    In any case, I agree with the Bleeding Hearts that putting more people in jail won’t really solve anything and would probably create more problems than before. I think that the real threat to Gang Culture and the Gang Lifestyle isn’t to round them all up and put them in prison together where they will reinforce their gang beliefs and strengthen their Gang Culture, but rather to dilute them out across the country so as to limit their contact with each other, limit the influence that gang members have on children that are susceptible to adopting Gang Culture.

    So here’s my idea: write new laws saying that new Public Housing cannot be concentrated in any particular areas, that it has to be spread pretty proportionally across the country. Instead of having tens of thousands of units of public housing just on the South Side of Chicago, instead start the process of shutting those down, and instead building replacement public housing across the rest of the city, AND in the suburbs, AND in the exurbs, AND in the rural areas, AND in farther away rural areas, and hell in Alaska why not, just spread them out. Same thing with Section 8 and other subsidized housing schemes: set a maximum number of section 8 vouchers that can be redeemed in each geographic area. Everyone shouldn’t be allowed to use their housing vouchers on apartments in the gang infested areas. They should be forced to spread out.

    That is the real way that you cut gang culture off at the knees. Dilute the gangbangers out all across the country so that they can’t spread their culture onto poor susceptible inner-city youths.

    Hell there is some synergy here with the issue of illegal immigration. People say that we need migrant laborers from central america to work our farms. Hell no, build some housing out in farm country and have former urban poor do it. They’ll come back so tired from a full day of work that they won’t have the energy to cause any trouble.

    • Doesn’t work, crime just goes up in those neighborhoods and anyone who tries to continue to push that policy gets voted out of office. Or do you recommend we switch to a dictatorship? What local politician can stay in office when they have to tell their constitutes that we are going to move in gang members into the local high school?

    • Re: spreading out section 8 housing.
      The Virginia city I lived in for 20 years did just that within its borders. A ten unit block was next door to my town house complex.

      The city police and the other residents in the block were very aggressive in keeping things on the up and up, and when a pre-teen egged my home, his parents trotted him over afterwards to apologize.

      It wasn’t without any problems (one suicide by cop in the two decades I was there), it never got out of control and proved to be a means for people to get back on their feet and move on to more desirable accommodations.

  32. Nobody wants to see “Junior” go to prison for a long stretch. Junior’s momma doesn’t; and that’s understandable. Momma’s neighbor doesn’t. The race-grievance agitators don’t. #BLM doesn’t. Their polititions don’t. And, finally, the taxpayers holed-up behind gated communities don’t. So long as the gang members are targeting other gang members, it’s largely a political problem that can’t be addressed by the political and criminal-justice system.
    Now, then, if only we close all our eyes and really wish hard enough we can get rid of all these guns in the ghetto. Somehow, that can be made possible without really bothering the OFWGs who have a shotgun or something for “sporting” purposes. Then, there just won’t be any guns to seep into the ghetto and peace will prevail.
    After UBC, how is it that a sister with a Dremel can’t continue her straw-buying activity with little chance of getting caught? Let’s see how this works: Find a crime gun; note the make + model + serial; submit to ATF . . . What? Serial number is defaced? Who would have ever thought of that?

    • Why bother with the Dremel? “Officer, I haven’t seen that gun in years, I guess it was stolen a while back.” End of story, UBC *cannot possibly* accomplish anything whatsoever besides facilitating confiscation at gunpoint. Some states have it, what has it accomplished?

  34. “America doesn’t have a gun problem. We have a gang problem.”

    True enough, but if you compare a color-coded map of violent crime rates in the U.S. with a color-coded map of voting patterns, the becomes undeniable that America has a Democrat problem.

  35. Because as soon as you do that the fact they are all funded by the War on Drugs immediately comes into center view. You are forced to anwser just what the hell blowing a 10th+ of the deficit on the CSA has gotten us beyond funding these gangs.

    The government hopes the CSA can quietly continue on because focusing on it takes away the power it gives to control people’s lives and have a crime they don’t need much effort to plant on people (stolen property has to come from somewhere and risks an alibi. Drugs don’t).

  36. TTAGS excerpt:
    “Young people are dying on our streets because too many legislators will not take a stand against the powerful gun lobby,” chicago.suntimes.com columnist Mary Mitchell writes. “Gang activity is undesirable, but it is not killing young people. The easy access to lethal weapons is.”
    __________________________________________
    Yes! We know! This woman is an absolute moron, a bipolar , TASS media writer, seeding lies, and grinding a political axe! Why don’t 700 TTAG posters head on over to her news rag and flame the living $#!t out of her !-

    • Because it looks like comments are not allowed at the Chicago Sun Times……..

      Otherwise the empty headed liberals would have to retreat to their safe spaces with hurt feelings when they see comments from people who have thoughts not in lockstep with their own……

      I actually spent a few minutes perusing her twitter feed (and have lost a few IQ percentage points doing so), she seems to be obsessed with racism, BLM, the Clintons/Obama/Democrat politicians in general and of course guns!

  37. Because gangs have always been used as justification for additional police powers, tax dollars, and pats on the back at city hall for “doing something.” Why do you think section 8 housing is being pushed on essentially crime-free suburbs? The tentacles of the progressive octopus weren’t going to restrain themselves to urban America forever.

    • Exactly. Besides, If we want to make everything in this country a law enforcement issue, then by definition it requires the creation of a police-state.

  38. The real question is why would we? The wars on drugs and poverty are not exactly smashing successes.

  39. Maybe crime needs to be better organized? Organized crime (i.e. the old mafia) had a lot less violence, especially harming innocents, than currently disorganized street gangs).

    People are going to want things like drugs and hookers. There will always be gambling and protection rackets.

    So we need better organization and centralization, and a dispute resolution mechanism that doesn’t involve drive-bys.

  40. “So here’s my idea: write new laws saying that new Public Housing cannot be concentrated in any particular areas, that it has to be spread pretty proportionally across the country.”

    —snip—

    “That is the real way that you cut gang culture off at the knees. Dilute the gangbangers out all across the country so that they can’t spread their culture onto poor susceptible inner-city youths.”

    They are now doing that. Guess what happened?

    Crime in the suburbs is skyrocketing.

    Give this article a read, it’s from ‘Atlantic Magazine’, a leftist publication:

    “Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concluded in a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “the front end … of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.” The leaders of the group, which is made up of police chiefs and sheriffs, theorized about what might be spurring the latest crime wave: the spread of gangs, the masses of offenders coming out of prison, methamphetamines. But mostly they puzzled over the bleak new landscape. According to FBI data, America’s most dangerous spots are now places where Martin Scorsese would never think of staging a shoot-out—Florence, South Carolina; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Reading, Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee.

    Memphis has always been associated with some amount of violence. But why has Elvis’s hometown turned into America’s new South Bronx? Barnes thinks he knows one big part of the answer, as does the city’s chief of police. A handful of local criminologists and social scientists think they can explain it, too. But it’s a dismal answer, one that city leaders have made clear they don’t want to hear. It’s an answer that offers up racial stereotypes to fearful whites in a city trying to move beyond racial tensions. Ultimately, it reaches beyond crime and implicates one of the most ambitious antipoverty programs of recent decades.”

    –snip–

    “When his map was complete, a clear if strangely shaped pattern emerged: Wait a minute, he recalled thinking. I see this bunny rabbit coming up. People are going to accuse me of being on shrooms! The inner city, where crime used to be concentrated, was now clean. But everywhere else looked much worse: arrests had skyrocketed along two corridors north and west of the central city (the bunny rabbit’s ears) and along one in the southeast (the tail). Hot spots had proliferated since the mid-1990s, and little islands of crime had sprung up where none had existed before, dotting the map all around the city. ”

    I highly recommend reading the entire article:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/306872/

    This fits perfectly with the Obama administration goals, that everyone should suffer equally. The thugs in the ‘hood are happy, the pickings are much better in the suburbs…

    • EDIT – Understand, this isn’t optional. The Feds are threatening to cut off Fed money to cities that don’t smile and happily welcome the thugs in their nice communities.

    • @Geoff

      That’s a good point although that article is from 2008 so I’m curious to how that theory has fared over the last 8 years. Obama would have us believe that crime is down overall. Not that I believe him without checking the stats, but its exactly the sort of endeavor that I believe would yield dividends over time. Yeah you move some current gangsters from the city out to the suburbs and they are likely to continue committing crime. However their kids are no longer only influenced by other gangsters, they get to experience mainstream culture where people aren’t expected to be gangsters and maybe have much better chance of transcending the culture of their parents.

      • It’s a nice idea, but it really doesn’t work.

        People tend to hang out with people like themselves. Transplant a group into a new area and they will tend to socialize together. And if ‘thuggin is a part of their culture… You get the idea.

    • Section 8 has generally been a disaster, of course there are some great stories of successes but more commonly it has caused crime to spread from localized inner city areas to neighboring cities and the suburbs. I believe Bill Clinton also instigated some sort of similar policy that was actually studied and found to be an unmitigated disaster.

      My favorite quote from the article is this one:-

      “In May of 2007, a woman from upscale Chickasaw Gardens was raped by two men, at gunpoint; the assailants had followed her and her son home one afternoon. Outraged residents formed Citizens Against Crime and lobbied the statehouse for tougher gun laws”

      So two thugs overpowered and raped a woman and the outraged locals blamed the gun, you couldn’t make this stuff up!!!

      • Is that why we should all carry 2 guns? (I saw that in a movie once, so I know it’s real!) So we can shoot in 2 directions at once?

  42. … because gangs will shoot you if you mess with their business, while peaceful, responsible citizens who own guns will not.

    “Never go up against someone who’s read Mao, when cultural change is on the line.” (from The Princess Bride, revised edition.)

  43. Two reasons why there is no war on gangs:

    According to the left, private individuals are responsible for nothing. All that matters is the group. If you are a success, it’s only because of the help you got from society. If you are a failure, it’s because society failed you.

    It’s too expensive to lock up gang bangers until they are no longer a threat. In Illinois, the annual cost per prison inmate is $38k. The Chicago police superintendent estimated that 1,350 hardened bangers are responsible for most of the violence. Putting them away for 50 years would cost $2,5 billion.

  45. To Robert’s lead question: When has a War on Anything ever resolved the behavior? A new govt war on behavior and association will only enshrine the perpetuity of criminality because of the existence of yet another enduring government agency: the Department of Gang Intervention (DGI) or some such. Puhleaze. We don’t need another ATF or DEA type agency willing to undermine constitutional rights.

  46. If you think that drug legalization will solve the gang problem then you fail to understand that drug dealers are criminals dealing in contraband and not criminals because they deal in contraband. They will no more stop being criminals if drugs are legalized than Ben Siegel became a law abiding citizen after prohibition ended.

    Our gang problem is caused by the breakdown of civil society in the inner cities and whether weed is legal or not the gang culture will continue on. America’s urban ghettos are minature Mogadishus that are without rule of law. They have to be rebuilt from tbe ground up. Advocates of legalization as a solution to gang violence are merely projecting their middle class values on people who don’t have them.

    • I mean legalizing drugs won’t magically instill in these people the social instinct to follow the rules of mainstream society, but at least it will 1) strip these individuals of a major source of income that enables them to evade real work, 2) strip the gangs collectively of the resources that they use to bribe local political and community leaders and in places like Mexico and elsewhere in Central America, it will strip them of the money that their government can’t even compete with 3) keep kids from ruining their future prospects over drugs.

      Now some kids will still ruin their lives over some other crime but at least it won’t be over drug posession or dealing which are relatively victimless.

      Also, without drug revenue, having to get a real job just to survive, many of them will probably come back from work too tired to engage in antisocial behavior.

      • Did stripping the mafia of revenue from illegal alcohol deprive the mob of revenue? Hint: They mob controlled the legal distribution of alcohol until the early 80s.

        There is also a myth that Juwon the gangbanger is getting rich by selling drugs. However, that is not true. Freakonomics has demonstrated that the average street peddler isn’t getting any more than he could by working at McDonald’s. Most of the revenue goes upstream.

        Criminal organizations make money from things like tax free cigarettes. The Chicago gangs may be making as much money from the Cigarette trade as they do from illegal drugs.

        The problem cannot not be solved without addressing cultural issues. Drugs, legal or illegal, get in the way of building civil culture. What you see as lawlessness is nothing more than the private enforcement of social and “legal” norms in a stateless society.

        • True, most of the profits go up the food chain… HOWEVER… someone just starting out can begin with grass, and in a short period of time make enough to move up the chain and begin moving harder drugs. Drugs which can be stepped on. Even if the dealer only retains 10%, that can amount to a pretty hefty income. The real problem for the dealer is when the dealer is using the product.

        • Drug legalization would probably work to reduce gang related violent crime when the gang follows a business model instead of a cultural model. But the evidence from prohibition is weak. Did mafia violence fall because ending prohibition remove a cauae or was in just coincident with mob consolidation? The peak power of the mafia was in the 50s and 60s and not during prohibition. Gang related murders skyrocketed in the decade before prohibition as the newly arriving Jews and Italians startng displacing the Irish mob. There were other factors at work. Prohibition merely added another area of competition.

  47. because you can’t. its just like drugs and anything else. banning it doesn’t make it go away. Declaring a “war on gangs” will do just that. turn our streets into EVEN MORE of a gang shootout than they are now. THAT is what would lead to stricter nation wide gun control.

  48. America doesn’t have a gang problem either, we have a “War on” problem. Everytime we encourage, insist upon, or even allow a new “War on” to start, we are infact giving the government carte blanche to take a minor problem and make it a major problem, while fortifying their power and authority in our lives.

    If we weren’t waging a “War on Drugs” ,or a “War on Human-Trafficking”(prostitution), a “War on Gangs” would be as unnecessary as a war on bootleggers, and gangs would be relegated to a minor, if annoying, cultural blemish.

    Even leaving aside all the economic drivers, every single “War on” begats more of what it claims to want less of, preciely because once the intitution chagred with such a war is given the resources and authority it needs to wage it, it needs more and worse of the thing its fightling to perpetuate itself.

    In fact, I would go so far as to posit that every single majory societal ill that afflicts us is exacerbated, if not outright created by, a government entity’s “compelling interest” in a social engineering project of one kind or another.

    We are a bunch of warons!

  49. A lot of people are mentioning the War on Drugs as an example of government failure. It is a failure because:

    1. It’s a racket used by the government to make money off seizures.
    2. It’s a half-measure.

    Duterte in the Phillipines is waging a pretty successful war on drugs right now.

    • Bullshit. Duerte, is just raising the stakes/prices for doing business, while terrorizing a population and providing a State-sanctioned alibi for anyone that wants to kill their perceived enemies.

    • Please cite any reasonable metric indicating that Duerte’s campaign of mass murder is actually succeeding.

      Dead bodies are not an indicator of “success”, unless the goal of the war is to indiscriminately kill a bunch of people. I know that is what drug warriors actually want, being a bunch of violent, mindless animals.

    • Please explain how Duerte’s campaign of mass murder is a success with some quantifiable metric.

      Then again most drug warriors believe the goal of the drug war is to kill people they dislike, so I can see how they view both the US and the Philippines as a success stories.

  50. The other reason besides the false projection of racism that there is no war on gangs is the police would actually have to work. It would get ugly battling gangs and getting them off the street but in the short term it would be worthwhile. The only solution long term is to get rid of the culture of the baby daddy and baby momma. Restore the nuclear family and the allure of gang membership will fade.

  51. Not a good idea. We declared a war on druge and have more of them. Declared a war on poverty and have more poor folks. PLEASE do not declare war on politicians!

  52. There’s another angle on this:

    By clearing out the thugs from the inner-city into the ‘burbs, the inner city is now ripe for gentrification.

    Expensive apartments and trendy retail establishments can now operate without the criminal class preying on them like vultures. Inner-city property values will skyrocket as wealthy professionals move back in, and suburbia property values will decline.

    Yeah, sounds like a Progressive utopia in the making…

  54. I recall reading a news story wherein a woman, who had been exhibiting signs of some sort of mental problems, murdered her two daughters in front of her husband. In the comments, several people were discussing how the story showed a need to improve mental health care in this nation and how friends and family members need to be more active and vigilant in recognizing warning signs. Then an anti-gunner got on and said none of that stuff mattered and was only drawing the discussion away from the REAL issue, which was that she had a gun. If she’d had a knife instead, the daughters may have possibly only been wounded, and the entire thing would have been a non-incident, apparently.

    That’s right. To that particular anti, at any rate, wanting to murder someone and even actively attempting to carry out that desire is 100% OK, so long as the odds of success are slightly less than they could be. To that person, gun control is such a major issue that everything, even addressing the real root cause and trying to massively reduce such incidents, is lower priority.

    Personally, I think it all comes down to personal responsibility, or rather, lack thereof. If mental health is a real issue, then it’s my fault if I turn a blind-eye to obvious warning signs. And if something isn’t caught, it’s at least in part because I failed to notice it. Similarly, if gangs are a real problem, then it’s my community’s fault for failing to raise our kids right, or failing to reach out and give them other options, or failing to just do something in some way.

    Whereas, if guns are the real issue, then I’m not responsible at all! It’s all the government’s fault for not controlling guns better! I didn’t fail to recognize a family member going crazy; the government failed to deny them a gun! My community didn’t fail our youth; the government failed to keep weapons off the street! By embracing gun control as the top priority, we can pretend that when something goes wrong (as it inevitably will, even in the best system), we bear no personal responsibility.

  55. The answer is that many of our politicians are corrupt and they participate in and profit from the corruption.

    When you have “skin in the game” you don’t stop criminal enterprises that make you money.

    At its core, this is the same reason that some Republicans are OK with electing Hillary Clinton. They are on the gravy-train and an outsider like Trump threatens their gravy portions!

  56. Lots of “easy access to lethal weapons” among rural youth, and yet it doesn’t seem to be getting them killed in a hail of gunfire – unless of course they happen to be in a criminal gang. Hmmm… maybe it IS the gangs rather than the guns that are the problem!

  57. I have had the same thought, the problem is that merely being a part of a gang falls under a person’s 1st Amendment Right to peaceably assemble. We’re we to go down that road what would stop the government from labeling groups like the Oathkeepers or local militias as “gangs”?

    The way we defeat violent gangs isn’t by picking off individuals (as we do now) nor is it criminalizing merely being a part of one. Gangs recruit and operate with drug money. Without the lure of easy drug money young teens will be less enticed to join. Without profits from drug sales gangs have little reason to even exist. Solution: legalize drugs.

  58. Careful what you ask for. Given the bang-up job the government’s done in “The War on Poverty,” “The War on Drugs,” and “The War on Terror” if they started a “War on Gangs” the whole country would look like Chiraq in 10 years.

    The best thing the government could do to end poverty and violence would be to end “The War on Poverty” and “The War on Drugs” — legalize all drugs. Ending those and ending “The War on Terror” would be a good first step toward restoring our much-trampled Constitutional rights — no more excuses for unconstitutional searches and seizures because “I smelled marijuana” or “anyone with that much cash must be involved in drugs.”

  59. Gun controls the crime control. They’ve got little interest in reducing crime and a lot of interest in disarming the public to protect their own interests.

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