Following my Taki column, Ross Douthat has a good NYT column on New York's Mayor Bloomberg:
The leading gun control chorister was Michael Bloomberg, and this was fitting, because on a range of issues New York’s mayor has become the de facto spokesman for the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite. Like so many members of that class, Bloomberg combines immense talent with immense provincialism: his view of American politics is basically the famous New Yorker cover showing Manhattan’s West Side overshadowing the world, and his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole.
It’s an assumption that cries out to be challenged by a thoughtful center-right. If you look at the specific proposals being offered by Bloomberg and others, some just look like reruns of assault weapon regulations that had no obvious effect the last time they were tried. Others still might have an impact on gun violence, but only at a cost: the popular idea of cracking down hard on illegal handguns, for instance, would probably involve “stop and frisk” on a huge scale, and might throw more young men in prison at a time when our incarceration rates are already too high.
In other words, Bloomberg has a comprehensive strategy to maximize real estate values in New York City by pushing out as many "young men" = youths = ... and otherwise neutralize their ability to cause homicidal problems as much as possible. Chicago under Mayor Emanuel is trying much the same thing, but is so far botching the execution, with the remaining Chicago youths shooting each other in numbers large enough to put some second thoughts into gentrifiers.
As Mayor Rahm might say, never let a crisis go to waste. It would be nice to not let the crisis of an uptick in the number of spectacular suicide terrorist shootings go to waste in the long term game of undoing the Great Migration and gentrifying the supercities. Obviously, these media frenzy shootings constitute a tiny percentage of all gun deaths, but white on white mass shootings are too mediagenic to allow to go to waste.
Let's use Google News to see how many other pundits are noticing the organic connection between Bloomberg's enthusiasm for gun control and for stop and frisk:
brings up 24,200 news articles of recent weeks.
But Google News
Seven out those 24,200 mention "stop and frisk:"
Search Results
Bloomberg, LaPierre and the Void
New York Times-Dec 22, 2012The leading gun control chorister was MichaelBloomberg, and this was fitting, because on a range of issues New York's mayor has become the de facto ... for instance, would probably involve “stop and frisk” on a huge scale, ...Guns, Race and America's Collective Psychosis
CounterPunch-Dec 21, 2012... “Up w/Chris Hayes” praised Mayor Bloomberg for his gun-controlpolicies. Nothing about his stop and frisk Gestapo policy, which led 640,000 ...
Michael Bloomberg, Dianne Feinstein, Dan Malloy and More ...
Daily Beast-Dec 16, 2012Gun control should be Obama's "number one priority,"Bloomberg added. ... mayor also defended his city's controversial “Stop and Frisk” policy, ...Gun control should be Obama's "number one priority," Bloomberg added. Don’t think Bloomberg is going liberal yet, the mayor also defended his city's controversial “Stop and Frisk” policy, which disproportionately targets black and Latino residents, calling it "proactive policing." "We send our police officers to problem places where there are problem people," Bloomberg said.New York Gun Control: After Newtown Shooting, Renewed Pressure ...
Huffington Post-Dec 17, 2012blockquote> This video, posted to YouTube by Mayor Bloomberg'soffice, ... target="_hplink">racial biasin the NYPD's stop-and-friskpolicy.
 | What we don't know about Joe Lhota
Capital New York-Dec 20, 2012
He'd also have a real shot at winning over thatBloomberg-loving, ... Lhota can't be taken entirely seriously as a potential mayor yet is that the public, ... has on education policy, stop-and-frisk, gun control and U.S. policy in the ...
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Media, politicians obscure social roots of Connecticut shooting
World Socialist Web Site-Dec 17, 2012
The focus on gun control is, in part, aimed at evading discussion of the more ... out most clearly by New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, ... rights associated with the “stop and frisk” policy of aggressive searches of...
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The Connecticut Massacre And America's Culture of Violence
Black Star News-Dec 19, 2012
Some politicians are now saying gun control must be addressed to stop ... Mayor Michael Bloomberg is now speaking out on anti-gun initiatives. ... NYPD including the racist Stop-and-Frisk procedures, which target Black men...
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So, three leftist sites, a few wrap-ups, a few miscellaneous, and Ross. Will anybody grasp what Ross is even talking about?
In general, white people in American love to hate each other so much that it is very hard for them to empathize with each other, even over something as obvious as that gun control makes more sense in the city than in the country.
In general, white people in American love to hate each other so much that it is very hard for them to empathize with each other, even over something as obvious as that gun control makes more sense in the city than in the country.
Interesting fact about Bloomberg-
ReplyDeleteHe moved from 142nd to 17th in the Forbes list of the world's billionaires in only two years (March 2007 – March 2009).
San Francisco is not totally gentrified yet but it's inevitable; Bloombergism may be the next Manifest Destiny that academics residing in SuperZIPs complain about for a living
ReplyDeleteHow does gun control benefit law abiding city folk who've been both dis-armed and selectively victimized for decades?
ReplyDeleteIs a man who is unwilling to defend his family or himself from violence via force of arms (guns), really a man?
cipher
Great points by Ross and Steve. I think there are two dominant political ideologies amongst today's American, urban, cosmopolitan, technocratic elite.
ReplyDeleteOne is "Bloombergism", which is probably best represented by the Economist magazine. It's for all intents and purposes center-left, but relies on semi-managed market based solutions in order to shape society.
The other is "Yglesisism", which is probably best represented by Slate.com or Salon.com. It's certainly left wing but soft left. It is not hostile to market but relies of heavily managed market based solutions if possible and "soft" government ownership solutions to shape society.
Conservatism is a distant third in American life (unfortunately) and it has much less power than both conservatives and liberals realize. Libertarianism is far distant fourth and is honestly not a movement that the Elite takes seriously. Myself, a conservative, doesn't take it very seriously either.
So as you can see, these two dominant, sometimes friendly, sometimes competing ideologies keep pushing society leftward.
The next focus will be to gradually push people back into the cities on a mass scale. Bloomberg and Yglesias both agree on this.
Interesting times....
FYI if you read "the city that became safe", it shows that New York hasn't increased its incarceration rate at all since 1990 even as the crime rate has dropped to less than a quarter of what it was under dinkins. Further while the african american population has declined in Manhattan, it is the same in the bronx, queens, brooklyn and has actually increased in staten island, all of which have had equally great drops in crimes.
ReplyDeleteIn fact New York State has a very low incarceration rate for african americans, it is 1627 out of 100,000, which is the second lowest in the nation (behind Maryland), whereas the national rate is 2290 out of 100,000.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_stateratesofincbyraceandethnicity.pdf (look at page 6)
Stop and Frisk is so effective because it is so widespread (if your a young black male you know your going to get stopped and frisked, so you don't carry a gun, which leads to few gun arrests, less than 2% of stops result in a weapon being found, which leads to low incarceration)
Does it though.. Who are the victims of gun violence in he cities? The same class of people who do the shooting. On the other hand the mass shootings that provoked the recent outrage weren't specifically urban. Gun control is more about these shootings than the ones that happen in the hood, because the people who wrote about gun violence do not really venture into the hood that much. They do on the other hand spend a lot of time in schools theaters malls and universities.
ReplyDeleteFYI if you read "the city that became safe", it shows that New York hasn't increased its incarceration rate at all since 1990 even as the crime rate has dropped to less than a quarter of what it was under dinkins. Further while the african american population has declined in Manhattan, it is the same in the bronx, queens, brooklyn and has actually increased in staten island, all of which have had equally great drops in crimes.
ReplyDeleteIn fact New York State has a very low incarceration rate for african americans, it is 1627 out of 100,000, which is the second lowest in the nation (behind Maryland), whereas the national rate is 2290 out of 100,000.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_stateratesofincbyraceandethnicity.pdf (look at page 6)
Stop and Frisk is so effective because it is so widespread (if your a young black male you know your going to get stopped and frisked, so you don't carry a gun, which leads to few gun arrests, less than 2% of stops result in a weapon being found, which leads to low incarceration)
Does gun control make sense in the city? It's been a miserable failure everywhere it's been tried. There's no putting this particular toothpaste back in the tube.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all you do, Steve. You are the best out there.
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to believe the stop-and-frisk policy could effect such a population shift. Couldn't those young Black guys just stop carrying guns and stay where they are?
ReplyDeleteSan Francisco is not totally gentrified yet but it's inevitable; Bloombergism may be the next Manifest Destiny that academics residing in SuperZIPs complain about for a living
ReplyDeleteIn San Fran they have "stop and fist".
Steve, the mayor's name is Emanuel.
ReplyDelete"In other words, Bloomberg has a comprehensive strategy to maximize real estate values in New York City by pushing out as many "young men" = youths = ... and otherwise neutralize their ability to cause homicidal problems as much as possible. Chicago under Mayor Emmanuel is trying much the same thing, but is so far botching the execution, with the remaining Chicago youths shooting each other in numbers large enough to put some second thoughts into gentrifiers. "
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read on the Second City Cop blog, CPD leadership is defined by incompetence compared to the NYPD's competence. The majority of CPD promotions seem to be based on political patronage. While this is always a problem in police and fire departments, there is so much of it, and the patronees so incompetent, that most of the rank and file have retired on the job. Rahm brought in a former NYPD officer to run the show, but he's been ineffective in righting the ship.
Living in densely-populated Boston, I could almost find myself willing to concede the logic behind the city's imposition of a marksmanship test for handgun licenses... but since that test is a prerequisite even for restricted "Target and Hunting" only licenses (the city basically doesn't give out any other kind, unless you've already been victimized repeatedly), and since the city appears to deliberately make the process as inconvenient as possible in order to discourage potential license-seekers (e.g., using a different form from the statewide form, making it available only in-person at police headquarters after a prescheduled appointment, etc., making life difficult for gun dealers and gun clubs), I'm not inclined to be so empathetic. As a law-abiding citizen with a spotless record and a steady job, who passed a marksmanship test with flying colors, I'm still restricted to hiding a baseball bat in a gym bag when I have to go through Roxbury, Dorchester, or Revere late at night. Fortunately, I'm a young, slightly largish guy with some martial arts training, but that still puts me in a much less safe position than I'd like.
ReplyDeleteChicago under Mayor Emmanuel is trying much the same thing, but is so far botching the execution, with the remaining Chicago youths shooting each other in numbers large enough to put some second thoughts into gentrifiers.
ReplyDeleteEmanuel rather looks like Tim Curry on his Wikipedia page. An idea for a movie showing him as a scheming but inept mayor.
In general, white people in American love to hate each other so much that it is very hard for them to empathize with each other, even over something as obvious as that gun control makes more sense in the city than in the country.
Only if you're rich. If you're a poor white living in the city, you're kinda SOL.
"In general, white people in American love to hate each other so much that it is very hard for them to empathize with each other, even over something as obvious as that gun control makes more sense in the city than in the country."
ReplyDeleteRemove the DWL/SWPL suicidal anti-white ideology and suddenly the issue of gun control vanishes. Gun control is simply an excuse for DWL/SWPL types to avoid the elephant in the room by blaming guns instead of recognizing the facts of HBD.
Why should non-insane whites "empathize" with people who are driving the USA, and Western Civilization, over a cliff?
San Francisco is not totally gentrified yet but it's inevitable; Bloombergism may be the next Manifest Destiny that academics residing in SuperZIPs complain about for a living
ReplyDeleteSF has ready-made Oakland/Richmond to dump its undesirables. Does NY? I don't know, I'm asking.
not all the gun control advocates want total disarmament, but bloomberg does. he wants every last gun in america taken away.
ReplyDeletethis is why any reasonable conservative in the US understands what the goals of gun control actually are. sure, we get that not every gun control advocate wants to take away all the guns. we understand that just fine. we also understand just as well that some of them do. some of them want that bad.
it's one of the few issues conservatives have actually fought on, and so far, they've won. but for how long, we'll see. they caved to liberals on most other issues.
it's mind boggling that the federal government can force you to buy stuff now, a flagrantly unconstitutional policy, so is it really that far fetched than in another 20 years they will have steadily whittled away even the right to own small arms?
as far as i can tell, law matters less than policy. democrats are free to ignore the law now, and set policy as they see fit. in the future, they may just start collecting guns in the cities which they control. they already pay no attention to other laws which they don't like and don't enforce them in their cities, so why not eventually firearm laws as well.
frisk than risk.
ReplyDeleteOne thing to keep in mind with New York City (and D.C.) demographic statistics (perhaps Miami, too) is that African-Americans get replaced by non-Hispanic blacks from the West Indies, Africa, and Haiti. I believe Tilove cited 1979 as the beginning of the decline in African-American numbers in New York City.
ReplyDeleteby the way, i want to propose the idea that maybe there is NOTHING anybody can do to stop stuff like the connecticut shooting.
ReplyDeletei think people are approaching this the wrong way. everybody seems to be thinking there's a way to stop this from happening, but hey, my idea is way better than the other guy's idea, so screw him and his ideas, let's move forward with my ideas.
personally i take a step back from even that and think, probably nothing will stop this stuff. determined attackers can kill, that's for sure. there are over three hundred MILLION people in the US. that's so many people. no way can you control what that many people do.
the FBI says there are 30 people a day shot and killed by somebody else. that's excluding suicides. so more people were shot and killed THAT SAME DAY all across america than were killed in connecticut.
mass shootings suck - but our data says they aren't becoming more common. and the rate at which people shoot and kill each other in the US is declining. connecticut already had extensive gun control and an assault weapons ban and a gun free school zone, and none of it worked.
i don't know if the authorities should do nothing, but i do know it would be 100 times better if the television media didn't go for blanket 24 hour news coverage on these stories, whipping up the nation into a frenzy. imagine if they had simply buried this story like they bury so many other stories which don't fit their agenda. few people outside of CT would have heard of it, and fewer would have cared.
"Further while the african american population has declined in Manhattan, it is the same in the bronx, queens, brooklyn and has actually increased in staten island, all of which have had equally great drops in crimes."
ReplyDeleteAccording to the annual reports put out by the city of NY (Health and Mental Hygiene, if I remember correctly), the number of blacks born in the city per year fell by 36% between 1990 and 2010. The number of Hispanics born per year fell too, but not as much. The number of whites born per year, if memory serves me, fell by a percent or two, Asians have increased. These numbers are much more reliable than the Census numbers. The Census is a very rough estimate, while pretty much all births and deaths are still being registered.
So yes, the black population of NYC has declined by A LOT in the last 20 years. And it's become more African and Caribbean, less traditional US black over that time. These two trends (the decrease in number and foreignisation) can explain some of the drop in crime, though probably not all of it.
By the way, the number of murders in NYC this year will record a yet another post-1960 low at a little over 400. It peaked at 2,245 in 1990, under Dinkins. The methodology was changed around 1960, so modern murder stats aren't comparable with the pre-1960 period. I think before 1960 they only counted solved murders as murders. Something like that.
" I believe Tilove cited 1979 as the beginning of the decline in African-American numbers in New York City."
ReplyDeleteah, so the warriors was a documentary.
warriors...come out and play.
riffs, riffs, riffs!
OK, I see Steve has also commented on the replacement of local blacks by foreign ones in NYC. I didn't see him saying that when I typed my previous anonymous post. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteWhere have the local blacks gone? "Down South". I knew a few who made the move, and that's what they told me. They usually still keep in touch with relatives there. I'm guessing that lower rents and housing prices were the motivation. The rents have certainly increased here (in NYC) during the last 20 years more than nationally.
I think there are two dominant political ideologies amongst today's American, urban, cosmopolitan, technocratic elite.
ReplyDeleteThey're not technocratic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocrat
"Technocracy is a form of government in which experts in technology would be in control of all decision making. Scientists, engineers, and technologists who have knowledge, expertise, or skills, would compose the governing body, instead of politicians, businessmen, and economists."
Steve, I doubt very much that Rahm Emmanuel wants to cleanse Blacks out of the city for the profit of the Real Estate section of the "FIRE" group. Because Black votes got him elected. And the political machines of LA, NY, Boston, Baltimore, DC, Philly, etc. all depend on Black voters who turn out "early and often" to push machine candidates over say, the Kausian reformers who pop up every generation or so.
ReplyDeleteWhich means stop and frisk is going to go away, its not politically sustainable because the next Mayor (who won't be Republican) will OWE Black voters that deal. And lets be honest here, in most major cities, you are on your own if there is a hurricane (Sandy caused no police for about three weeks, Andrew about the same in Homestead Florida) or riot.
You and I both saw likely the same footage on CH 4 here in LA when the LAPD ran away from Florence and Normandy at around 5 pm; letting poor Reginald Denny get nearly beat to death. Which is a political object lesson, if you rely on the police they will protect you even in urban areas ONLY when the politics permits it.
This is a recurrent problem in America, where colonial authorities to those of the present day have viewed vast sections of the populace expendable because of political constraints.
Bloomberg has an armed security detail paid for by the taxpayers of New York City. He probably also has bodyguards paid by him personally; these men are likely the finest that money can buy - the sort of men that Liam Neeson portrayed in "taken" - ex special forces types. He wishes to deny to every one of us even any rudimentary kind of security.
ReplyDeleteAfterall, it's no fun being lord of the manner, if everyone else is not a serf.
The opinion of our society's elites about the rest of us is the same as that described by the tribune Canuleias in ancient Rome: "Do you perceive in what contempt you live? They would take from you a participation in this light, if it were permitted them. That you breathe, that you enjoy the faculty of speech, that you possess the forms of human beings, excites their indignation."
ReplyDeleteIn San Fran they have "stop and fist."
In Texas too.
"One thing to keep in mind with New York City (and D.C.) demographic statistics (perhaps Miami, too) is that African-Americans get replaced by non-Hispanic blacks from the West Indies, Africa, and Haiti. "
ReplyDeleteAnother element here is that, even if there weren't differences in crime rates between African Americans and Caribbean blacks, having a diverse population of blacks would probably result in lower crime, as the diversity, by lowering trust and cohesion, would limit the scope of criminal activity. A "no-snitching" code might protect an African American on his block, but not on a Jamaican block nearby. Similarly, some criminal energy that might otherwise be applied to preying on law-abiding citizens gets dissipated on inter-ethnic vigilance.
This diversity also weakens the political power of blacks, I would think. Of the five borough presidents in NYC, four are white, and the fifth (The Bronx) is Puerto Rican.
I'm pretty sure the drop in crime from 1990 has more to do with crime normalizing from its rise in the 70's and 80's.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the rise can be attributed to cocaine, economy, integration, and gangs in the 70's and likewise for the 80's to include crack and gangsta rap.
The phenomenon of street gangs and their relation to crack was so explosive, no one knew how to assess the damage.
Things are just normalizing from an unnatural peak. I wouldn't get excited.
Which means stop and frisk is going to go away, its not politically sustainable because the next Mayor (who won't be Republican) will OWE Black voters that deal. And lets be honest here, in most major cities, you are on your own if there is a hurricane (Sandy caused no police for about three weeks, Andrew about the same in Homestead Florida) or riot.
ReplyDeleteAs long as no one is getting plungered or getting shot while unarmed, I don't think even Blacks will mind living in a safer city.
""Technocracy is a form of government in which experts in technology would be in control of all decision making. Scientists, engineers, and technologists who have knowledge, expertise, or skills, would compose the governing body, instead of politicians, businessmen, and economists."
ReplyDeleteBloomberg is a technologist (in addition to a businessman and politician), so he counts as a technocrat. The eponymous business he built was a tech company, and a pretty revolutionary one at that. He basically created his own secure Internet for financial data, communications, and trading, and he did it in the early '80s. Way ahead of the curve. And he did it without raising much outside money, so today he owns about 85% of Bloomberg, L.P., making him richer than Steve Jobs was when he passed away.
Bloomberg is a dream political leader for rich liberals: someone who is as socially liberal as they are, but is extremely competent, and a quiet hard ass when it comes to quality of life issues and policing NAMs. It's like having the best of Giuliani, without his annoying, nominal Republicanism (Bloomberg has since renounced his temporary republican affiliation), and marital dramas. And Bloomberg has added some added economic benefit, by, for example, cultivating the city's growing tech scene.
Dear White Lefty gun control nuts,
ReplyDeleteIf you want white rural conservatives to show some racial solidarity, then you will have to explicitly *ask* for it. No more getting the hell away from/actively victimising coloured people, then pretending you just lurve them and you're really scared of conservative whites. Be explicit, or STFU.
Yours,
A Puzzled Conservative Libertarian.
"One thing to keep in mind with New York City (and D.C.) demographic statistics (perhaps Miami, too) is that African-Americans get replaced by non-Hispanic blacks from the West Indies, Africa, and Haiti. I believe Tilove cited 1979 as the beginning of the decline in African-American numbers in New York City."
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing, but during the crack infested 80s it was theorized that the new Jamaican blacks were far more dangerous than the old Great Migration blacks NY city was populated with and Chicago still is. A substantial amount of the violence was from the children of Puerto Ricans (Jose Pinero being a famous gangster poet). So I think it is something other than demographics. Maybe the federal reserve money printing benefits NY city, Washington DC, and somehow LA which produce virtual things. While cities on the Great Lakes are screwed. It is worth remembering that when the Great Migration Blacks came north they were seeking and got advanced manufacturing jobs. The Great Migration Blacks were also capable of more political organization as they were all similar and had been in the country much longer, and were all citizens that could vote. New immigrants can't vote, which is one reason New Yorkers like them.
There has been a change in the Jews too. From the master of the universe types typified by Michael Milken or even Michael Bloomberg of the 80s, now the typical NY Jew is an Orthodox Jew.
The East Asians are more numerous, but come from different parts of China. I vaguely remember someone suggesting that increases in Asian crime were due to immigrants from Fujian Province, which somehow affected their ability to assimilate.
FWIW here in NY there are signs of financial stress. One reason the tunnels flooded was nobody even attempted to seal them. But why? My guess is Bloomberg is running short of money having made huge pension promises to keep labor peace, and thought he would gamble by not spending any money on Hurricane Sandy. He did the same thing during a snow storm, but the snow piled up faster than expected and paralyzed the city for a week. The city being paralyzed by weather conditions is something you have to go back to the 1800s to see even once but during Bloomberg admin it is already twice.
I thought religion, specifically Christianity, was the source of all killing and hatred but none of these young spree killers seems to be very devout.
ReplyDeleteJersyGuy wrote:
ReplyDelete"The next focus will be to gradually push people back into the cities on a mass scale. Bloomberg and Yglesias both agree on this."
I don't think anyone needs to push this, economic trends will do this for them.
I'm kind of thinking we might get "Oreo" cities like they have in France.
If NYC is anything like Boston, they're using Section 8 housing vouchers to export the criminals to the suburbs.
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:12 mentions Dorchester, Roxbury and Revere. Dot and The Burry have been historic black rathole neighborhoods in the city (and mostly Jewish back in the Sixties when I was growing up in the Back Bay), but Revere was an Italian enclave 7 miles north of downtown, home to the oldest public beach in the country. It's now indistinguishable from any other urban minority area. Ditto for the neighboring North Shore towns of Malden (probably the most diverse city in the area other than Boston), Everett (Little Rio), Medford (where Bloomberg grew up as a little Jewish kid getting beat up by Italian toughs) and especially Chelsea, a postage stamp-size majority Hispanic city with a murder rate higher than Boston's. A friend in property management says that the increase in the dollars available to Section 8 tenants, up to $1,600 in some cases, with Boston being one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, makes these people extremely portable. My own city of Melrose, a sleepy city with too much rental property that was 98% white when I moved here 13 years ago, is now 91% white; I piss off the natives when I speak of the "Maldenization" of Melrose. Test scores are down, but the boys' basketball team won the D II state title last year, so I guess it's a worth a few armed robberies of pizza delivery guys.
Steve has been commenting on Italians in America lately, and Greater Boston is instructive. The North Shore was historically Italian, moving up out of the North End and East Boston. The South Shore was mostly Irish, moving along the coast out of Southie and the adjoining parts of Dorchester. The current North Shore is far more diverse than the South Shore. According to Wikipedia, Revere went from being 85% white and Asian in 2000 to 67% white and Asian and in 2010. It's mirror on the South Shore, Quincy, is 89% white and Asian.
Anonymous jody said...not all the gun control advocates want total disarmament, but bloomberg does. he wants every last gun in america taken away. this is why any reasonable conservative in the US understands what the goals of gun control actually are.
ReplyDeleteEqually enlightening is to see what gun-control advocates in Great Britain have implemented. I don't think they're any different from those in the US philosophically.
The British experience demonstrates that (a) the left will continue to whittle away at the gun ownership no matter what limitations it has already placed on it, and (b) even the strictest limitations cannot prevent "gun crime" and large-scale massacres.
Britain always had much stricter gun laws than the United States, but the laws were tightened dramatically after two horrific massacres, one at Hungerford and one at Dunblane.
In 1987, in what is known as the Hungerford massacre, a man armed with two semi-automatic rifles and a 9mm pistol killed 16 people. Afterward, semi-automatic rifles of all kinds were banned, as well as shotguns with large capacity magazines.
In 1996, a man armed with two 9mm semiautomatic pistols and two .357 magnum revolvers committed a massacre at the Dunblane Primary School, killing 16 children and one adult. As a result, private possession of handguns was banned in Great Britain.
Despite these restrictions, there was a mass killing in Cumbria in 2010, when a taxi driver killed 12 people and injured 11 with a licensed double-barreled shotgun and a bolt-action .22 rifle, two weapons so innocuous that no liberal in America would dare say he wants to ban them.
Despite the severe restrictions on gun ownership, gun crime actually rose in the last decade in Britain, as a Daily Mail article from 2009 states:
"Gun crime has almost doubled since Labour came to power as a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold. The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year - a rise of 89 per cent.
"In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold. In eighteen police areas, gun crime at least doubled. The statistic will fuel fears that the police are struggling to contain gang-related violence, in which the carrying of a firearm has become increasingly common place."
"Gang-related violence"--in the 1960s, it meant the Mods and the Rockers fighting with car antennae and beer bottles. Today it means shoot-outs and armed robberies committed by Third Wold immigrants admitted into the country in the last 20 years. But of course that policy cannot be questioned.
LOL @ Technocracy. That was an actual movement that was supposed to Answer Everything if only everyone would go along! My mother's MIL was into that.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was inspired by (engineer) Herbert Hoover's splendid record.
Gun control doesn't make sense at all, Steve. Except to tyrants.
ReplyDeleteSheesh you really are an old liberal Republican dreaming about a NYT sinecure. Let's all be reasonable! Let's be pragmatic! Let's accommodate the Left because they have some good ideas--they just take them too far!
OK isteve readers, time for a straw poll.
ReplyDeleteWho is the best conservative writer featured in a mainstream liberal periodical?
a. Ross Douthat, NYT
b. Thomas Sowell, NR
c. Victor Davis Hanson, NR
d. Rod Dreher, TAC
"One thing to keep in mind with New York City (and D.C.) demographic statistics (perhaps Miami, too) is that African-Americans get replaced by non-Hispanic blacks from the West Indies, Africa, and Haiti."
ReplyDeleteAre these populations less prone to violent crime than African Americans? In the UK, 'Afro-Caribbean' people are something like 2% of the population (not that you'd know that from TV), but 14% of the prison population. And you can search for 'West Indian Festival' and shooting to see that right in the US and Canada there is plenty of violence associated with that community.
Bloomberg is a technologist (in addition to a businessman and politician), so he counts as a technocrat.
ReplyDeleteBloomberg was always more of a media company than a tech one, even at the beginning.
I think there are two dominant political ideologies amongst today's American, urban, cosmopolitan, technocratic elite.
ReplyDeleteNASCAR is a better example of technocracy than contemporary urban America.
The most recent evidence that New York is it's own unique bubble when it comes to this stuff: New York City Suicide Rate Will Likely Top Murder Rate for 2012. The murder rate is on pace to be the lowest in NYC in 52 years.
ReplyDeletei want to propose the idea that maybe there is NOTHING anybody can do to stop stuff like the connecticut shooting.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Every once in a while, someone is going to go crazy and want to kill a bunch of people. Anyone who thinks we can predict who will do this should spend an afternoon reading through cases at a site like crimelibrary.com. You can read about serial murderers and mass killers going back more than a century, and very rarely was there any warning. Oh, many of them had bad upbringings or previous trouble with the law, but so have millions of people who never turn to mass murder. We don't have the first idea how to pick out future mass killers.
Given that there will be hopeful killers, they will be able to find weapons. We won't be able to keep them from getting guns, without such tight control that the cure would be worse than the disease. But again, go read a few dozen mass-murder cases and see how many were done with poison or knives or simple bludgeoning. A gun isn't required; it only makes the process more efficient.
So, given that there will be hopeful mass murderers showing up in public places with deadly weapons, our last hope is to stop them at the point of attack. A nearby policeman might be useful there, but we can't expect to have one on every corner and in every classroom -- and wouldn't want to if we could. That leaves armed citizens as the only reasonable last line of defense.
But that's not a perfect answer, so it's not acceptable to liberal utopians. They won't be satisfied with "two dead in shooting before nearby citizen takes out killer" over "armed man kills twenty-five before police arrive." Imperfect solutions are not allowed, if there's a perfect fantasy left to be tried some more.
Dreher isn't conservative he's a political romantic with religious traditionalism as his romantic object. An Adam Mueller for the 21st century. Douthat is a true profile in courage though. Of course the game-right writes him of as a chubby beta who believes in Christ.
ReplyDeleteBloomberg was always more of a media company than a tech one, even at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteBloomberg TV was set up eight years later, after Bloomberg terminals were already dominant in institutional-trading.
To the commentator who pointed out the historical separation of italians from irish in boston... Is this still true? Do the irish and italians mix more in nyc than they do in boston?
ReplyDeleteI am not an expert on irish italian relations but i think breezy point, famous around america for allowing no nams to live there had plenty of irish and italians who would often intermarry
ReplyDeleteIrish and italians in nyc appear to intermarry in nyc at the prole and the swpl level in nyc
Bloomberg TV was set up eight years later, after Bloomberg terminals were already dominant in institutional-trading.
ReplyDeleteThe terminals are essentially media devices.
"Are these populations less prone to violent crime than African Americans?
ReplyDeleteYes. And I think the difference is large.
In the UK, 'Afro-Caribbean' people are something like 2% of the population (not that you'd know that from TV), but 14% of the prison population.
You're comparing them to whites. Are Jamaican immigrants to the US more crime-prone than US whites? Definitely. But they're still much less crime-prone than US blacks. It is also possible that the US is getting a better sort of Jamaicans, Haitians and Africans than the UK. Is this actually true? I don't know. But it's possible. The US is definitely getting a better sort of East Indians than the UK.
I am not an expert on irish italian relations but i think breezy point, famous around america for allowing no nams to live there had plenty of irish and italians who would often intermarry
ReplyDeleteMother Nature was not so easily excluded.
The US is definitely getting a better sort of East Indians than the UK.
I don't know, the Indians in Britain seem to be a reasonably well-adjusted bunch. What may make them look troubled is that they often get lumped in with the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.
Vancouver seems to be the main focus for low-quality Indian immigration. The Indo-Guyanese and the Indo-Trinidadians in the New York area also tend to be fairly low on the socioeconomic ladder.
Peter
"Which means stop and frisk is going to go away
ReplyDeleteThat's the best thing I've heard about New York in a while. I've been needing something like that since Sandy. If Whiskey says that stop and frisk is doomed, then stop and frisk really must be here to stay. Which is great.
On the west channel in New Orleans, the Irish and Italians pretty much make it their turf. I've known my share of characters who were products of both ethnicities. They had this dude as their sheriff for decades, a very feared man. Only in Louisiana.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas everyone.
ReplyDeleteDoes it though.. Who are the victims of gun violence in he cities? The same class of people who do the shooting. On the other hand the mass shootings that provoked the recent outrage weren't specifically urban. Gun control is more about these shootings than the ones that happen in the hood, because the people who wrote about gun violence do not really venture into the hood that much. They do on the other hand spend a lot of time in schools theaters malls and universities.
I get the feeling that gun control is just about tribalism and indoctrination. The indoctrinators want gun control, so they indoctrinate their useful idiots to want gun control. They're a receptive audience because their tribe isn't much into guns anyway, and their hated rural and lower-SES tribal enemies are.
The whole mass shooting thing is a storm in a teacup. Try G**gling for how many people die every year in America from mass shootings. Good luck getting a straight answer. There are no statistics for the "mass shooting epidemic" that supposedly justifies shredding the Constitution. The media will give you lists of mass shootings, but no statistics. The government does not keep statistics on mass shootings.
That's how big a deal mass shootings really are to the gov't and media; so big, they don't even have statistics for how many lives they take each year, how many lives they've taken over the last 30 years, etc.
Mass shootings are just a media ploy to get gun control. There's no "there" there.
I can G**gle up annual deaths from bee stings, lightning strikes, or drunk driving and get a straight answer on the first page of results - usually the first result. I can't find any straight answers about mass shootings on the first two pages of G**gle results.
About 12,000 people are supposedly killed in drunk-driving accidents every year in America. About 90 die from bee stings, and about 75 die from lightning strikes. I get the feeling mass shootings take about as many lives as bee stings or lightning strikes, but the media and gov't would rather not admit that.
But I'm certain that drunk driving takes far more lives than mass shootings. I'm also certain that there's no explicit, specific protection of the right to produce, trade, possess, or sell alcohol in the Constitution. Why don't we ban alcohol and save 12,000 lives a year? We can save far more lives, without trampling on an explicit, specific, Constitutionally-protected right. Let's do it for the children!
Remove the DWL/SWPL suicidal anti-white ideology and suddenly the issue of gun control vanishes. Gun control is simply an excuse for DWL/SWPL types to avoid the elephant in the room by blaming guns instead of recognizing the facts of HBD.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it's just knee-jerk libtardism. "Duh, gunz kill people, ban gunz!"
by the way, i want to propose the idea that maybe there is NOTHING anybody can do to stop stuff like the connecticut shooting.
Yep. I said as much in a previous gun control thread here, but I don't know if Steve ever posted it. He sent a whole raft of my comments to limbo. I freely admit that I don't mind standing on the argument that liberty has a price, and Newtown is it. I can make lots of other arguments against gun control, but I don't mind saying that.
mass shootings suck - but our data says they aren't becoming more common.
Whose data? I can't find jack squat.
I kinda see a bundle of reasons for libtards to hate guns, rather than any single issue, though I guess you could collectively call refer to them under the banner of "tribalism":
Rural people like guns, and urban people don't, for cultural reasons.
Urban people don't like rural people, and vice-versa.
Black crime will thrive under a gun ban; fewer whites defending themselves with guns is good for blacks.
Blacks can't afford much in the way of guns anyway.
Statists hate guns, and the 2nd Amendment, and the ideas behind the 2nd Amendment.
Rich people can afford bodyguards and special exceptions and red tape, and they dictate libtard policy.
Guns have a profound equalizing effect on the ability to deal violence, and so are anathema to the elitists who dictate libtardism; peasants with weapons has always been a source of elite indignation.
Libtards are dumb enough to think prohibition will work for guns, even though it didn't work for booze.
We won't be able to keep them from getting guns, without such tight control that the cure would be worse than the disease.
One of my limbo-ed comments made the point that a nut can just buy a ton of low-capacity pistols and get quite the massacre of innocents going if that's what he wants to do. Firing each gun until it is empty, dropping it, and drawing a fresh one will always be faster than reloading a single weapon.
I am not an expert on irish italian relations but i think breezy point, famous around america for allowing no nams to live there had plenty of irish and italians who would often intermarry
As far as I can tell, the statement "intermarriage between Irish and x is high" is true for all values of "x."
"Steve, the mayor's name is Emanuel."
ReplyDeleteMatthew: "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet [Isaiah]: 'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emanuel'--which means, 'God with us.'"
How seasonal! "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt in Chicago".
Why are the black leaders about this? Have they been bought off ala Obama?
ReplyDeleteIf they go along, lots of toys and prizes?
Money makes bullshit talk.
What may make them [Indians] look troubled is that they often get lumped in with the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.
ReplyDeleteDeliberate policy by MSM here in UK. They also cover for gypsy criminals by calling them Romanians or East Europeans.
"and his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole."
ReplyDeleteZero tolerance was a cover for the ethnic cleansing by harassment of black people from Manhattan / Harlem.
The problem is black people have a vastly disproportionate violent crime rate because this hasn't happened yet among black people.
http://hbdchick.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/pinker-fig-3-3.jpg
This problem could be fixed or adapted for if it could be discussed openly but the media and academia deathgrip on the culture prevent it being discussed.
"Stop and Frisk is so effective because it is so widespread (if your a young black male you know your going to get stopped and frisked, so you don't carry a gun, which leads to few gun arrests, less than 2% of stops result in a weapon being found, which leads to low incarceration)"
ReplyDelete"find it hard to believe the stop-and-frisk policy could effect such a population shift. Couldn't those young Black guys just stop carrying guns and stay where they are?"
Say young black males are 20% of the total black population and you take the worst 10% of them then that final 2% of the total black population will be responsible for 50%+ of the black crime.
Because the media generally prevent the police from dealing with black crime - by refusing to accept black crime is vastly disproportionate compared to other groups - the police developed stop and frisk as a way of minimizing the inevitable body count that resulted from ignoring the problem.
That's the general case.
However in New York zero tolerance was the cover for giving the police a green light to crank stop and frisk up to old "Sundown" levels of constant in your face harassment of that 2% so they moved to places like Camden New Jersey and destroyed those towns instead.
When talking about demographics and crime it's not just black or white it's gender and especially age.
.
"SF has ready-made Oakland/Richmond to dump its undesirables. Does NY? I don't know, I'm asking."
During the time i knew about it they moved to places like Camden New Jersey. It may be different now.
The other critical aspect of this is it's the 2% that prevent gentrification by scaring off gentrifiers. If the police chase those guys off then it simply becomes a case of economic power and the non-violent part of the black population loses that fight easy and have to move away.
So, the "liberal" solution is to sic the police on the scariest 2% of the black population and drive them off to kill bluecollar white people in the cheaper suburbs.
The "liberals" can then gentrify the now much safer but still extremely cheap black neighborhoods pushing the black population back down south.
.
"Britain always had much stricter gun laws than the United States, but the laws were tightened dramatically after two horrific massacres, one at Hungerford and one at Dunblane."
No gun control until 1903.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom#History_of_gun_control_in_the_United_Kingdom
Intermarriage between the Irish and Italians around Boston is common, but they still have their enclaves, like "Guinea Gulch" in Saugus and the "Irish Riviera" in Scituate.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between the two is that the Irish in Boston trended Left and have long controlled the city and state bureaucracy, along with some serious welfare dependency, as depicted by the Southie project girls in Gone Baby Gone. The Italians are a bit more conservative and still control the rackets, despite Bloomie's gun control buddy and current lefty Boston mayor, semi-literate nitwit Thomas "Mumbles" Menino, who speaks nothing recognizable as the English language. Google "Mumbles Menino" and check out some of his malapropisms. You'll be left wondering how this idiot was elected mayor of one of the most educated cities in the country.
The trend in Boston since the early 1900s was that the Irish stole from the government and the Italians stole everything else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD2RhWCJkWk
ReplyDeleteBickle advises Bloomberg.
Whites just act like they hate each other to score points. The reality is that minorities actually demonstrate that they hate each other through their day-to-day behavior far more
ReplyDelete"[S]emi-literate nitwit Thomas "Mumbles" Menino... speaks nothing recognizable as the English language."
ReplyDeleteI did my Menino impression for my New York-based cousins at our Christmas party. They chuckled, until I explained that I was not exaggerating for comic effect (okay, I was, but only just barely), and that he really does sound like that. Then their jaws dropped and their eyes went wide. As someone else put it years ago, "It's like he has a whale's tongue and an infant's lungs".