A 27-year-old man was killed and 24 other people were shot after gunfire erupted early Sunday morning in Akron, Ohio, during what a police official said was a big birthday party.
Officers responded to 911 calls shortly after midnight, reporting shots fired and multiple victims struck in the area of Kelly Ave. and 8th Ave., according to a statement from the city’s mayor and police chief.
The shooting took place during a “large birthday party” that earlier in the night had more than 200 people in attendance, Akron Police Chief Brian Harding said in a Sunday evening news conference.
In the shooting’s aftermath, authorities found the scene “littered” with spent shell casings that stretched down a whole block, the police chief said.
I know that people hate hearing it, but the violence–specifically gun violence–is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
This was likely gang activity. Gang activity is driven by a lot of socioeconomic factors; long-term fixes are things like community reinvestment, properly funded education, reducing income inequality, criminal justice reform, and so on. Even things like reproductive rights and access to birth control and abortion help rather significantly here. If you fix the underlying issues that drive gang activity in the first place, then you eliminate most of the violence problem without also affecting civil rights.
Unfortunately, in the US, one side appears to only have the political will to remove a particular civil right, and the other side wants to obstruct everything and blame it on all “personal responsibility”.
blame it on all “personal responsibility”.
As I get older I think the mistake is thinking this is a black or white issue. I think instead its more like a mix of personal responsibility and other factors all come together and all sides argue about it being either or only.
And in a case where a decision like this is made, I feel personal responsibilities are a huge factor.
Doctors treat symptoms while they treat the problem, they don’t just offer you thoughts and prayers. Even if the problem isn’t treatable, they still do everything in their power to control your symptoms.
Imagine you turned up to a doctor with every bone in your hand broken, only to have them claim “Sorry, we refuse to give you painkillers because the pain is just a symptom. If someone just spends 12 months reconstructing your hand, the symptoms should be mostly gone. I won’t do it (and I’ll staunchly oppose anyone that tries), but that’s the real solution”.
They wouldn’t just be considered a dogshit doctor, they’d be considered a genuinely evil person.
So stop with the apologist bullshit. No gun control advocates are stopping you from building your violence-free utopia that you insist will solve everything. The society we have today is fucked up and you need to stop selling them guns.
I know that people hate hearing it, but the violence–specifically gun violence–is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
This was likely gang activity.
I’m not sure that makes sense, you’re arguing that gangs, not guns are the problem when every country has gangs but not every country has guns so readily available.
I’m not sure that makes sense
The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental civil right in the US, and I believe that access to the means of self-protection is a human right. I think that correcting the underlying issues that lead to gang activity would have more benefits overall than trying to ban a constitutional right.
While gang activity exists in all countries, countries with fewer social problems and lower economic inequality have far less of a problem with gang activity.
So we’re just dropping the whole well-regulated militia part of that civil right? They didn’t really mean that part right?
“Well-regulated” was understood to mean ‘trained’. The militia was every able-bodied adult male, and they were legally obligated to supply their own militarily-useful firearms.
Couldn’t owning more guns contribute to threats in life at a greater rate then they protect individuals?
Let me ask you this - do you believe that people have the right to protect their own lives? Does that right depend on your size and gender?
Yes they do have a right to protect themselves.
Let me ask you, do humans have an accurate ability to perceive threats and predict actions of other people
I would also like if you could answer the first question I asked if you have the time.
Yes they do have a right to protect themselves.
Okay, so how does a 4’10" 95# person protect themselves from someone like me, at 6’2", 240#, weightlifter, with experience in TKD, judo, and longsword fencing? (Oh, and stun guns mostly just tickle; I’ve tried one on myself.) Do they only have the right to self defense if they’re small?
do humans have an accurate ability to perceive threats and predict actions of other people
Most people can make pretty reasonable predictions about when a situation is becoming threatening, yes. Just ask any woman that’s walked home alone in a city after dark.
Drop the bullshit. You’re using short people and lone women as human shields for your hobby.
Are we really supposed to believe your dogshit gun laws are an act of feminism? You’ve put 100% of American women in more danger by arming criminals, rapists and domestic abusers and you want to claim it’s all worth it because the less than 20% of women who want to carry guns are possibly safer.
Which of course they’re not anyway. The moment they know a man is a “brandish your gun” level threat is when that man grabs them or pulls a weapon on them.
And you know what happens next don’t you Mr Action Hero? If the man is already in grappling distance, she gets disarmed and then probably killed with her own weapon. If the man has already pulled his gun, she gets shot before she can aim and fire her gun.
The best thing women can do to keep themselves safe is to avoid men who are walking red flags, like gun-owners that throw women under the bus for their own self-interest and awkwardly brag about martial arts training and being immune to stun guns.
The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental civil right in the US
The pro-gun community has wasted the last 20 years demonstrating that they’re unwilling or incapable of addressing gun violence and they use the second amendment to prevent others from addressing it.
Eventually, the people you’ve sold out will have no other choice but to repeal it. Pro-gun groups will throw an almighty tantrum but so what? They have no room left to escalate because we already have to listen to them endlessly bleat about guns, we already have to constantly fight them politically and we already live under the threat of being murdered by a far-right extremist with a gun.
access to the means of self-protection is a human right
Sure, if you can prove you’re not what we need protection from because you’ve been sold a gun. Nobody is opposing legitimate self-defense – that’s why they’re not banning door locks, burglar alarms and MMA classes because you can’t easily use those things to murder people on a whim.
I think that correcting the underlying issues that lead to gang activity would have more benefits overall than trying to ban a constitutional right
Let’s take you at your extremely dishonest word and say that gun violence is 95% social problems and 5% access to firearms.
Well the overwhelming majority of the actual people you’ve grouped as “enemies” support both gun-control and social policies designed to combat inequality, which addresses 100% of the problem. It’s literally the progressive platform.
For you to actual have an argument, they would need to support gun-control but oppose progressive social policies, and those people simply don’t exist in significant numbers outside your imagination.
But what about your “allies”? Well the majority of them support neither gun-control nor progressive social policies, for a grand total of 0% of the problem fixed. This tracks with the last 20+ years of them not solving any of these problems. It’s literally the Republican platform.
However you’re happy to be dishonest so you present them as a group that only opposes gun-control and sure, they exist, but they’re still only fixing 95% of the problem.
While gang activity exists in all countries, countries with fewer social problems and lower economic inequality have far less of a problem with gang activity.
And all of them also have far more restrictive gun laws, making them far more closely aligned with gun-control advocates than pro-gun groups.
if people truly have guns to protect themselves, why aren’t there more stories about people using them that way than there are about people using them offensively?
And that’s not why the second amendment exists, it’s not for personal protection it’s to form a well regulated militia to fight the government should it become tyrannical.
And a militia is pretty much a gang, so I guess we’re back to square one.
why aren’t there more stories about people using them that way
Bad news sells. If I pull a gun on someone that’s threatening me, and they back off, where’s the news story? That’s not even likely going to make it to a police report, much less CNN. When you look at statistics on defensive gun use, it’s a little hard to pin down numbers, but the earliest claim dates to '97, was based on a phone survey, and was extrapolated by the US National Institute of Justice to be roughly 1.5 million cases of defensive gun use annually, with the overwhelming majority not involving any shots fired at all. Take this article for example; the methodology is a little shaky, but that’s in large part due to the fact that–per my example–most cases of defensive gun use are never even going to progress to a police report in the first place, so surveys and self-reports are the best you’re going to get.
FWIW, I would not say that I’ve ever had to use a firearm defensively. I’ve carried one on rare occasions, and carried a rifle when investigating load noises outside after dark (it’s usually a bear, TBH)
And that’s not why the second amendment exists
It’s both. The 2nd Amendment was based off of English Common Law, which said that the government couldn’t disarm the people, because the people had the right to defend themselves. The rationale that they wrote in the amendment was for militias. And, FWIW, when it was written, ‘militia’ was understood to be every able bodied male that was adult (and not old enough to be infirm), and they were expected to supply their own serviceable military-appropriate arms.
I don’t think that it’s reasonable to qualify a militia per se as a gang, since ‘gang’ implies that the purpose is criminal activity. A militia might be engaged in criminal activity (for instance, the 3%ers, Patriot Front, Proud Boys, etc.), but other militias do community activism (the various John Brown Gun Clubs).
Bad news sells
So do lies and propaganda. That’s why pro-gun groups rely on imaginary threats, bullshit statistics and unverifiable anecdotes to justify a multi-billion dollar industry.
Oh hey it’s where I live!
Sounds gang-related. Gun control alone isn’t going to solve this, unfortunately, it’s a socioeconomic problem.
Yeah. It will. Just not the gun control you think of.
Socioeconomic? Ok, let’s give everyone free education and adequate individual or familial financial means to exercise upward social mobility, that includes everything from child care so parents can go to school and work to health care so they aren’t slaved to the job in fear of losing everything.
That’s, to my eye, what OP was implying.
Yes please.
No kind or amount of gun control will fix people turning to crime because of a lack of opportunities. You take your magic wand and make all guns disappear, people who want to harm others will turn to knives. Take those away and they’ll turn to baseball bats, brass knuckles, chains, and metal pipes.
Social programs are far more effective, and far more achievable too. The gun genie is out of the bottle, taking them away is near impossible. But giving people opportunities is not.
You take your magic wand and make all guns disappear, people who want to harm others will turn to knives.
Which would instantly be a massive improvement. Americas crime rates are functionally identical to other wealthy countries, only with a massively inflated homicide rate thanks to sick, stupid and desperate people being able to buy all the guns they want.
How do you even say stuff like this without feeling repulsed at yourself? When people try to raise money for cancer research, do you spit in their face and tell them “people will still die in car crashes and if we solve those they’ll still have heart attacks so why bother”?
You don’t think it will ever be your life it saves, so you don’t give a shit.
I disagree that guns are comparable to knives or baseball bats.
The only thing I agree with is that humans will still engage in violence and use whatever tools are available.
And for the record, I’m not for “making all guns disappear.”
You take your magic wand and make all guns disappear, people who want to harm others will turn to knives. Take those away and they’ll turn to baseball bats, brass knuckles, chains, and metal pipes.
Ok, let’s do it.
Guns are a lot more dangerous than anything else you mentioned.
Also, how many children are killed in knife accidents every year?..
So what you’re saying is the killers are poor, so high taxes on bullets could have prevented this.
You think drug dealers in some of the largest criminal gangs around are poor? What, you checking their tax records? They don’t report black market cocaine sales to the IRS and even if they did the money would have to be laundered. Guarantee at least half those dudes are richer than me with my menial “not crack selling” job.
Furthermore, “self defense only for rich whities who can afford the tax” isn’t the win you seem to think it is.
Gun control alone isn’t going to solve this, unfortunately, it’s a socioeconomic problem.
Gun control alone isn’t going to solve this, unfortunately, it’s a socioeconomic problem.
Drug dealing has a pretty extreme income distribution. Half of them earn less than minimum wage, only a couple of guys at the top actually make good money.
Half of em are doing it wrong then, I was nowhere near “the top” and I was making more than I do now legally. You just mean highschool dealers, or are we talking like, actual drug dealers that aren’t just smoking for free because the allowance mommy gives them doesn’t cover their need for weed?
Most of the street-level dealers that I saw in Chicago were not making a lot. I can’t guarantee that they weren’t dipping into their own supply, but they still lived in the same shitty, working-class neighborhood, and they were renting rather than owning. I’m sure someone was making a fair amount of money, but they guys on the corners, or the guys that fetched the drugs for the transaction, they weren’t making bank. AFAIK, they were mostly dealing pot and heroin; probably mostly heroin, based on the baggie sizes.
Well you have to live where the customers are and where the neighbors don’t ask questions, depending on what you sell and how much will of course vary that. Still, drug dealers have enough money that “tax bullets” isn’t going to stop them.
You might have to live near your customers, but you don’t have to live in exactly the same shitty circumstances. Based on the places they lived, they weren’t doing a lot better than the people around them that were working shitty minimum wage jobs.
You actually don’t have to launder it and you are supposed to report it.
You just send them a check and then all your taxes are paid
I feel like if you say “yes this is from all the cocaine I’ve sold” it might cause other legal problems, even though you won’t get Al Caponed there are also plenty of people in prison for trafficking.
You don’t have to say where it came from, you just pay the taxes, I shit you not there is a place for it
…wait…really?! You can just report things as unspecified income? I didn’t know that.
Still though, drug dealers aren’t exactly poor unless they’re bottom rung. I can’t speak for all gangs (though they do kinda all work this way) but the Bloods for instance get great prices on drugs in my area between members and sell to “civilians” at a huge markup, like a ball of coke for them is around $80 but they sell it for $150. I’ve sold drugs myself in the past, I actually currently have friends that bang though I never did, none of them are hurting for cash and I wasn’t back then either (but what I do now involves less prison, so it’s risk/reward.) Guess I didn’t have to tax evade, though I did lol. TIL!
It’s a catch-all category on your 1040 for ‘income from illegal sources’. I do know that you can’t take deductions for business expenses related to illegally gained income though, so you don’t get any kind of write-offs or deductions. (E.g., you can’t depreciate any of the durable equipment that you need to buy to conduct your illegal business, you can’t claim travel expenses, etc.) Plus, I think that it gets counted as ‘self-employed’ income, which means that you have to pay the full share of social security and medicare/medicaid that would normally be covered by an employer.
It’s pretty simple to do, honestly. But I don’t know if that kind of declaration can be turned over to another three-letter agency to start a criminal investigation into you, so ???
Chris rock had it right
Oh look another shooting
My ability to care has just been sucked out of me by the immense number of them. So fucked
