Eugene,
No a "study" as such. But in Washington DC in 1989 (I have the NYT article
cite on my office computer) 85% of murders were committed by blacks on blacks.
I recently saw a newspaper piece on Baltimore in 2007 that mentioned (in
passing as no big deal) that 80% of murders were black on black. And last
weekend's carnage in Chicago was 100% black on black.
There is no "academic" study, that would be racist. But there are facts
reported in newspapers.
Professor Joseph Olson, J.D., LL.M. o- 651-523-2142
Hamline University School of Law (MS-D2037) f- 651-523-2236
St. Paul, MN 55113-1235 c- 612-865-7956
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> "Volokh, Eugene" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/27/08 4:28 PM >>>
I certainly agree that much gun violence is committed by criminal gangs
that tend to be organized along ethnic minority lines -- but is there some
study that reports that *most* gun violence is so committed? Thanks,
Eugene
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jon Roland
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2008 2:18 PM
To: Greg Jacobs; Firearms Reg
Subject: Re: Heller case's resultant racial issues?
Racial issues are intimately involved in the gun control issue, today as much
as ever before.
1. Most gun violence is committed by criminal gangs that tend to be organized
along ethnic minority lines. See the excellent TV series Gangland (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangland_%28The_History_Channel%29 ) on the
History Channel. Legislators can't write statutes that allow discrimination
between gang members and ordinary citizens, so write them with the expectation
that they will be used as law enforcement tools selectively against the most
dangerous, which leaves it to the police to engage in profiling that inevitably
becomes racial.
2. Support for gun control legislation among minorities is hardly uniform, but
to the extent it appears, can be partially attributed to negative opinions
among minorities towards members of their own group, or other minorities. There
is nothing about racism that restricts it to attitudes toward other groups than
one's own. Some of the worse racism I have seen is among Blacks toward other
Blacks, and among Latinos toward Blacks and other Latinos. Self-hatred is still
hatred.
I attribute a major part of the problem to be in the ways the public is
educated about economics. Most get a rudimentary, and simplistic, concept of
supply and demand that enables them to conclude that if it were just possible
to reduce the general supply of weapons, then the demand for them, remaining
constant, would result in fewer people, the responsible and irresponsible
alike, getting and using them. That the demand among the irresponsible might
actually increase and cause even more of the irresponsible to get and use them
is not understood. What is missing is an education in economics and sociology
that imparts the reality that economic and social systems are complex
interacting systems with many feedback loops that can cause a law against
something actually to cause more of it. Counterintuitive Behavior of Social
Systems ( http://web.mit.edu/sdg/www/D-4468-2.Counterintuitive.pdf ), by Jay
Forrester, should be required reading in the public schools.
-- Jon
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