Alphecca

Drugs, Gangs and Guns

I try to pound this into the ground around here: Until street gangs, drug dealers, and other thugs are brought under control, there will always be illegally used guns on the streets. No ammount of gun control will change that. Gun control only punishes the law-abiding citizens. They're learning that in Rochester, New York. From the Democrat & Chronicle:

Serious crimes are those crimes tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to measure crime rates in U.S. cities. Called "Part 1 crimes," they are murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, robbery, larceny, arson and motor-vehicle theft. While it's nearly impossible to say how many illegal guns are circulating on Rochester's streets, experts say most are tied to the drug trade. But that link goes beyond the stereotype of dealers engaged in turf wars, said David Kennedy, a criminologist and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Dealers do carry guns, he said. And Rochester seems to have a large population of armed robbers who target drug sellers, which gives the dealers even more incentive to carry guns.

But in many cases, Kennedy said, shootings are tied to misguided ideas about respect. An otherwise trivial argument between two men ends in gunfire simply because friends are watching, or one of the men believed he'd be shot if he didn't shoot first. The victim's friends then retaliate, prompting more shootings.

"It reaches a point where this stuff just drives itself," Kennedy said. "The more shootings you have, the more retaliation you have and it becomes a cycle that lasts for quite some time. The tragedy is, even those involved in it say this is crazy."