The "soft on crime" policy is just racial pandering to both minorities and sympathetic whites who believe the criminal justice system unfairly targets minorities. Politicians get elected advocating these policies and the neighborhoods subsequently become overridden by violence, burn down, and businesses flee while the innocent are trapped in a terror-stricken hell-hole. Vast stretches of inner city Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC, Detroit, Chicago, LA, etc look like Dresden after the fire bombing campaigns of WW II. And the politicians just keep getting re-elected. Accountability only gets fixed when the crime spreads to the "white" neighborhoods in surrounding areas, which it inevitably does.
“Were I a believer in grand Machiavellian manipulations, I'd suggest a long con, where soft-on-crime policies were installed in order to cause crime to spike, and thereby to corral the public into supporting more gun restrictions. They're not that smart, not by a long shot, and they're not that capable. Politicians are either reactive, responding to the prevailing cultural whims, or ideological, clinging to a philosophy or belief no matter its failures, past and present. In both cases, the response to every problem starts with "it's not my fault!" and ends with blaming everyone but themselves.“
In Atlanta, where I live, some folks have lost their minds over the recent conceal carry law that was passed. The law essentially states that if you have obtained your gun legally and with permit then you don't need an additional permit to carry it. The standard parroting point from opponents of the law that I constantly see on social media is that this law has turned the city and state into the "wild, wild, west." This ignores the obvious reality that criminals already possessed illegal guns and thus never applied for conceal carry permits anyway, so it has no actual affect on criminal behavior. My sarcastic response is generally that the lemmings are right and that there was no gun violence prior to the law. They never seem to care for that response.
And Stacey Abrams has made the law the centerpiece of her campaign against the actual governor of the state. I'm thinking people aren't going to fall for it, but I'm probably giving too much credit to the general population.
Anecdotally it seems that 99.9% of gun violence is not committed by law abiding citizens with legal guns, but rather by criminals who have no respect for the law or humanity for that sake. So the uninformed (ignorant) can spare me the crocodile tears.
Uninformed reaction is the modern day norm, and the press is happy to propagate or permit that ignorance. Florida was predicted, back in 1987 when right-to-carry was enacted there, to turn into an "Old West" of mayhem.
That would be the fictionalized Old West of sensationalized newspaper reporting of the day, the Old West of serialized dramas born of that sensationalism, and the Old West of movies and TV. The real Old West had a homicide rate substantially lower than America does today.
Violent crime in Florida decreased across the years after right-to-carry. Markedly so. This continued the ongoing trend, and certainly didn't cause more mayhem.
It's a pretty simple and obvious conclusion: Legal gun owners aren't criminals.
Peter... Why did you have to tell me that? I got hooked on TV Westerns during the Pandemic. I'd hate to believe that cowboys weren't shooting each other up in real life every day. Next thing you know you'll tell me they didn't only eat beans and drink only coffee and whiskey, and didn't constantly get into barroom brawls. You may have well have just told me Santa Claus doesn't exist. Gotta go now, Tales of Wells Fargo is coming on.
The "soft on crime" policy is just racial pandering to both minorities and sympathetic whites who believe the criminal justice system unfairly targets minorities. Politicians get elected advocating these policies and the neighborhoods subsequently become overridden by violence, burn down, and businesses flee while the innocent are trapped in a terror-stricken hell-hole. Vast stretches of inner city Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC, Detroit, Chicago, LA, etc look like Dresden after the fire bombing campaigns of WW II. And the politicians just keep getting re-elected. Accountability only gets fixed when the crime spreads to the "white" neighborhoods in surrounding areas, which it inevitably does.
“Were I a believer in grand Machiavellian manipulations, I'd suggest a long con, where soft-on-crime policies were installed in order to cause crime to spike, and thereby to corral the public into supporting more gun restrictions. They're not that smart, not by a long shot, and they're not that capable. Politicians are either reactive, responding to the prevailing cultural whims, or ideological, clinging to a philosophy or belief no matter its failures, past and present. In both cases, the response to every problem starts with "it's not my fault!" and ends with blaming everyone but themselves.“
Love the insight!
In Atlanta, where I live, some folks have lost their minds over the recent conceal carry law that was passed. The law essentially states that if you have obtained your gun legally and with permit then you don't need an additional permit to carry it. The standard parroting point from opponents of the law that I constantly see on social media is that this law has turned the city and state into the "wild, wild, west." This ignores the obvious reality that criminals already possessed illegal guns and thus never applied for conceal carry permits anyway, so it has no actual affect on criminal behavior. My sarcastic response is generally that the lemmings are right and that there was no gun violence prior to the law. They never seem to care for that response.
And Stacey Abrams has made the law the centerpiece of her campaign against the actual governor of the state. I'm thinking people aren't going to fall for it, but I'm probably giving too much credit to the general population.
Anecdotally it seems that 99.9% of gun violence is not committed by law abiding citizens with legal guns, but rather by criminals who have no respect for the law or humanity for that sake. So the uninformed (ignorant) can spare me the crocodile tears.
Uninformed reaction is the modern day norm, and the press is happy to propagate or permit that ignorance. Florida was predicted, back in 1987 when right-to-carry was enacted there, to turn into an "Old West" of mayhem.
That would be the fictionalized Old West of sensationalized newspaper reporting of the day, the Old West of serialized dramas born of that sensationalism, and the Old West of movies and TV. The real Old West had a homicide rate substantially lower than America does today.
Violent crime in Florida decreased across the years after right-to-carry. Markedly so. This continued the ongoing trend, and certainly didn't cause more mayhem.
It's a pretty simple and obvious conclusion: Legal gun owners aren't criminals.
Peter... Why did you have to tell me that? I got hooked on TV Westerns during the Pandemic. I'd hate to believe that cowboys weren't shooting each other up in real life every day. Next thing you know you'll tell me they didn't only eat beans and drink only coffee and whiskey, and didn't constantly get into barroom brawls. You may have well have just told me Santa Claus doesn't exist. Gotta go now, Tales of Wells Fargo is coming on.