Please take a moment to read this piece from The Economist, before I give it the Fisking it so richly deserves…
Are you finished? OK… let’s go, then.
Right out of the gate, we need to deal with that accompanying photograph. Ideally you would want a photograph to convey something about the article you are about to read, and yet, I seriously doubt that this rise in gun violence we’re going to read about is being caused by expensive custom Glocks painted in the Stars and Stripes. Sure is a cool looking gun though!
Also, note that the hand holding the Glock is white. The racial component of the vast majority of gun violence in America is one of the most dangerous third rails in politics, so one has to wonder if The Economist chose this photo to emphasize a point made in the piece? or simply to avoid being electrocuted.
The article opens with a lurid and salacious account of a bloody day-long rampage that ranged all over Chicago and killed seven random people of all ages, sexes and racial identities. Naturally we are supposed to assume that this insane case is illustrative of the kind of gun violence this article will address. But is it?
“Such serial attacks are rare.”
Oh…
“Much more common, in cities everywhere, are retaliatory murders by small gangs. Some compete for drug markets, but often shootings have no end beyond a young gunman asserting his status or settling a perceived slight.”
OHHHH!!!
So why did this piece open with a murder that is entirely atypical? I think we know the answer to that.
Moving on…
After telling us that there were 770 murders in Chicago last year (a 50% increase), they give us this little tidbit.
“Eddie Bocanegra, who works with young men most at risk, says killers, many of them teenagers, have grown more ruthless. He describes a victim shot 21 times with an automatic rifle. He blames increased violence on more lethal weaponry, including magazines that hold dozens of rounds.”
We already know that The Economist is not above telling us an outlandish murder story that turns out to have nothing to do with the mystery they are trying to solve, so I think it’s fair to wonder if the “description” of a man shot 21 times with an automatic rifle is indictative of those 770 Chicago murders. Spoiler Alert: it isn’t.
According to crime statistics, murders by rifle are extremely rare. The reason is simple, killers generally don’t use them because rifles are very hard to conceal. And as rare as rifle murders are, murders by “automatic” rifles are even more rare. True automatic rifles are extremely expensive and very hard to find. As a result, it’s hard to think of a single case in recent memory where automatic rifles were used. Even the infamous Las Vegas country music festival mass shooting didn’t involve automatic rifles. That killer used semi-automatic rifles with bump stocks (which are now illegal). You pretty much have to go all the way back to the North Hollywood bank shootout in 1997 to find a crime where true automatic rifles were used. All of which makes me wonder if Mr. Bocanegra didn’t mispeak and say “automatic” when he should have said “semi-automatic”, which is a mistake a lot of people who don’t know much about guns make all the time.
And while we’re at it, what exactly does “more lethal weaponry” actually mean? This is one of those nonsense phrases you see in a lot of gun articles, even though it really doesn’t mean anything because the basic technology behind the way guns operate hasn’t changed in a hundred years. Same with describing a rifle as “high powered.” The only thing that can change the relative “power” of one rifle versus another is the ammo you run through it. Beyond that, all guns are pretty much the same. Fundamentally, guns are nothing but metal tubes with a hammer at one end and a hole at the other. The hammer makes the cartridge explode and sends the bullet flying, at high speed, out of the hole at the other end. Every semi-automatic rifle is exactly as lethal as every other semi-automatic rifle, and every handgun is exactly as lethal as every other handgun in that each time you pull the trigger, a single bullet comes out. Bullets come in different calibers (sizes) and larger bullets can certainly do more damage, but that’s not what’s being talked about here. Most journalists believe that an AR-15 (aka a “weapon of war”) is, by definition, more deadly than any other run-of-the-mill hunting rifle. But this just isn’t so. A .308 WIN round is “more powerful” than a .22 LR round in the sense that it’s larger and contains more explosive powder, but the different rifles that fire them are functionally identical (although .308 rifles are more difficult to shoot accurately). And in fact, you can buy an AR-15 platform chambered for either round. Both rifles are essentially nothing more than the tubes through which those bullets move. Almost every other significant difference between these various weapons is cosmetic.
Then we’re treated to this paragraph…
“Part of the explanation may be a boom in firearm sales, especially of handguns (which are usually bought for security, not recreation). Jurgen Brauer of Small Arms Analytics, which tracks industry sales, counts 22.7m handguns and long guns sold last year, a record, and 63% more than in 2019.”
“Especially of handguns”!? Wait, didn’t some other guy just tell us that the problem is “more lethal weaponry”? Eh… forget it, he’s rolling.
As for the rest of that quote, journalists love to put versions of this paragraph into their gun violence articles because they adore the “law abiding citizens buying guns leads directly to street violence” canard. Even if you assume that each and every new gun bought last year was stolen, which seems unlikely, there are something like 400 million legally owned guns in America. Is The Economist really arguing that a 5.5% nationwide increase in the total number of legally owned guns caused a 50% increase in inner city gun murders?
And what about this assertion?
“…He notes that availability of weapons is associated with higher rates of violence.“
No it isn’t.
Until very recently, violent crime had been on a forty-year downslope even as Americans bought record numbers of guns. The connection (or lack thereof) between gun violence and gun purchases is a pretty easy stat to track. When you do, what you find is that Barack Obama, for example, was the greatest gun salesman of all time. Gun purchases soared under his administration, and yet we did not see anything like the explosion of gun violence that we’re seeing now. Is the Economist claiming that new gun purchases were a cause of increased gun violence only in 2020? How does that work, exactly?
As someone funnier than I once quipped, “if legally owned guns were a problem in America, you would know it.”
Eight paragraphs into a nine paragraph story, the point at whch most readers will have stopped reading, the Economist finally begins to zero in on the problem.
“(University of Missouri Professor) Mr. Rosenfeld sees other mechanisms in play. The police grew less effective as officers fell ill with coronavirus, were quarantined or were diverted, for example by protests. Those still patrolling also practise social distancing. “That reduces the kind of face-to-face contact that can be effective,” he says. Police are most helpful if they prevent retaliation, stopping petty disputes escalating into shooting wars, but that requires a heavy presence on the ground. The widespread loss of trust in police after Mr Floyd’s killing “widens the space for so-called street justice”, he says.”
AH-HAHHHHHH!!!!
And finally, mercifully, we have arrived at the answer to this mystery. Turns out it’s not automatic weapons, or more lethal weaponry, or magazines that hold dozens of rounds. And it’s not guns illegally bought or stolen from silly goose law-abiding citizens who panic-buy guns they don’t really need. At the end of the day the problem is exactly what anyone paying attention could have told you it was. Fewer cops on the street with more restictive rules of engagement leads to more violent crime.
Who could’ve guessed that? Oh right, literally everyone.
Defund the Police indeed.
Impeccable logic GW