I was hoping for more than the reasoning exemplified by one who describes feral children as capable of charm.
How do you propose to understand the problem of firearm violence or the measures that might reduce it if you don't come to know the people who commit it? A good scientist doesn't just analyze statistics, most of which are meaningless, or base his policy advice on depictions in movies or on television. He gathers data from the field, directly and in person. I highly recommend that, and suggest a few things you might do to acquire such experience and the insight it brings.
First, the statistics do help identify who is committing the violence, and it is overwhelmingly male adolescents, mostly members of ethnic minorities, mostly those considered "low income" or of "low status". You can find them in most urban areas.
Some of the things you can do to acquire the experience include:
1. Be a landlord or manager of low-income housing, and actually live in one such, as I did for many years. Become involved in the lives of your tenants. Your experiences may include:
a. Chasing gang members out of the building who were trying to do their business upon on of your tenants or visitors to them, and perhaps on anyone who got in their way on on the building.
b. Chasing out pimps and prostitutes from the premises, having one of them turn and attack, subdue the subject, make a citizen's arrest, and watch as it takes five cops to get the subject into the paddy wagon.
c. Counseling female tenants abused by boyfriends or sometimes strangers; helping rape victims track down and apprehend their rapists.
d. Having young runaway girls beg for refuge after being abused by parents, foster parents, and the system generally, and putting them up and feeding because the alternatives were worse.
e. Chasing out 9 members of a motorcycle gang squatting in an empty apartment with a couple of their gay buddies who had recently murdered a local university professor who picked them up in a gay bar. Later helping the police track them down and arrest them after finding the evidence of the murder on the premises.
f. Stepping in between two guys, one a tenant and the other an intruder, the intruder holding a knife to the tenant's belly, starting to draw blood, over a dispute between them, and taking the firm position that they take their disputes outside that building, and that I would not tolerate violence on my turf.
2. Do some volunteer work in your local jail. Best way is to spend time as an inmate, for, say, 30 days on contempt of court for failure to produce nonexistent documents ordered to be produced in a civil case. Immediately assume the role of courthouse lawyer, and experience the flood of cases the other inmates will bring you. Nothing teaches so much so fast than being confronted with the ways the disadvantaged are treated by the criminal [in]justice system. If you think the system works, that kind of experience will soon dispel that illusion. But you don't have to become an inmate. There are plenty of opportunities for doing volunteer work for inmates without becoming one.
3. Accompany a policeman or social worker on his or her rounds out in the field. You will learn to appreciate their courage, especially the social workers , who are mostly unarmed.
4. Work as a substitute teacher, especially in a low-income school district, and especially for students of middle-school age. The kids you will meet are mostly not truly feral. For that you should spend some time in the favellas of Rio de Janeiro or other such cities where the ferals are killed by police hired by local merchants to remove the threat they provide. But the ones you will find in class are close enough. If you can ever achieve or maintain order for more than a few seconds and sneak in a little instruction during those moments. You will soon find that movies like /Dangerous Minds/ or TV shows like /Boston Public/ are not realistic. Reality is far worse than those depictions. But, yes, those children do indeed tend to be charming. They might not be able to read or do arithmetic, but their social skills of manipulation are highly developed.
5. Find the "neutral turf" that most rival gangs agree on, usually a playground between their turfs, where you can hang out, and talk to them one on one. Engage them in discussions on their lives and why they do what they do. Learn why they join gangs, and why they engage in violence. (Caution: don't reveal where you live, your vehicle, or anything they could use to track you down.)
6. Interview recently released inmates from prison, and discover how our prison system, far from rehabilitating inmates, is turning them into raging monsters and more skillful criminals. (The dragging death of a black man near Jasper, Texas, was less about racism than about prison rage.)
I could go on, but you should get the idea. The point is, one needs to encounter these people with respect and even love, but without naive illusions about the risks they present, and to learn from them. You need to understand them in the context of their own worlds, and then perhaps you will understand why they are killing one another, and occasionally people from the sheltered middle-class world inhabited by most of the people on this list.
What you will learn is that firearms are not the problem. Indeed, firearm violence is greatest when rivals are not equally armed, and is reduced most by armed parity. Disarmament is impossible. They can make their own firearms from scratch if they have to. Just hope they never get nukes or bioweapons.
--Jon
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