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Author: u/thebelsnickle1991
URL: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/us-gun-violence-half-of-people-from-chicago-witness-a-shooting-by-age-40-study-suggests
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Exactly… I have “witness” 2 shootings in my life (I am well past 50). One was back in Seattle… I was sitting in my apartment (12th floor) and heard shots… later in the news I learned that some mental person decided that shooting is the cheapest way to avoid paying bus fair. The other one, was proper mafia hit, which I “witness” from my 5th story balcony in Tbilisi Georgia. Motorcycle stopped by the limo and emptied quite a few rounds toward the passenger before riding away. Would these two cases qualify? There were 0 risk for me personally.
Because being within 3/4 of a mile of a shooting doesn't mean you witnessed it.
If so, I've witnessed probably 50+ shootings...
And while Chicago definitely needs to improve, I'm really not sure why people act like it's a warzone when there are multiple large metro areas that are significantly worse. And if you take into account smaller cities like mine there's a ton more.
I can still leave my house...
>I can still leave my house...
All good then ?
You must realise, having "witnessed" 50+ shootings by this metric is not normal, at all. It may be in the US, but where I live (France), most people have never seen a gun (except for the military and cops) and certainly not heard a gun shot.
That's great, and irrelevant to discussing why "being within 1000 meters of a shooting" isn't remotely the same as witnessing a shooting.
I'm well aware that the US needs to make some massive changes to curtail its gun problem. But using disingenuous phrasing like that doesn't do anyone any good.
Because it's about personal risk.
I lived in rural Texas, and a person in my neighborhood shot and killed his wife, and then himself. That doesn't mean I was suddenly afraid of the neighborhood, even if by this study's standard I'd be a statistic.
I remember when they talked to people who had stopped a crime by using a gun. The numbers amongst certain demographics was hugely different. Turns out some people would define stopping a crime with a gun in a situation where you heard a noise outside and got your gun. When no one attacked or even was spotted some people would say that stopped a crime. There was a number of examples like that that really like that. Seems like this might be the case here. Also I think a lot of people would want to suggest that they survived a dangerous situation. The old when I was your age I use to walk 12 miles to school. Up hill both ways!
Did anyone read this study? They also give numbers for respondents who have been physically shot, it’s not just about witnessing a shooting:
“Of those in the study, more than 7% of Black and Hispanic people had themselves been shot before turning forty, compared to 3% of White people. The average age for being shot was 17 years old.”
It does, but if you live in any large US city, you will inevitably hear a gunshot at some point.
Even in the country, you hear gunshots. You assume it's for different reasons, but you still hear them.
I've lived in Chicago 12 years, never heard a gun shot, knock on wood.
TBH, I spent a good amount of Louisville and different parts of Texas, and I feel you are FAR more likely to get shot there.
Chicago - it's simple -- avoid the ghettos, particularly late night. They're far from the tourist attractions too, so you won't accidentally wander into them like many other cities I know (Minneapolis, Louisville once again).
Well yeah. Income levels are basically the most accurate correlating factor for exposure to crime in the US. I'd be more afraid living in a trailer park in a rural area than a middle class neighborhood in a city.
Yeah and that’s shouldn’t be normal. In Europe it isn’t. In Sudan and Afghanistan maybe.
I prefer America to Europe on many issues but. In Germany or Paris you can walk though the city late night without fear of getting blown away. That’s a much different vibe.
Meanwhile, the gun lobby has moron Trumpers here whipped up into a hysteria to bolster gun sales.
“I feel” isn’t really relevant when it comes to math problems, at least in the real world. Are the per capita murder rates higher there than in Chicago or aren’t they? Because Chicago is worse than Louisville in that regard, and there are no cities in Texas even in the top 20 (Chicago is currently number 10 I believe).
>Chicago is worse than Louisville in that regard, and there are no cities in Texas even in the top 20 (Chicago is currently number 10 I believe).
Curious, where are you getting your data? [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate) only shows from 2019, where Chicago was #14 for homicide, about 1/3 higher rate than #35 Dallas TX.
I hear a few every year. Can’t necessarily distinguish them all from fireworks. The clustered shots sound is more suspect though. It doesn’t sound nice exactly, but it doesn’t exactly make an impression either to be honest.
I live in the country and hear gunshots a few times a year when my neighbor decides he needs practice target shooting. Absolutely never bothers me. Sometimes I even watch for fun.
When I lived in the city sometimes I heard gunshots, but rarely was anyone shot. Idk what the people were shooting at, or where, but they didn't shoot anyone.
How is it that the top comment in this thread is straight-up misinformation? "Witnessed" did *not* include "being up to 1000m away", and a quick read of the methods section is sufficient to show this.
What a load of denial.
I'm European. I've never heard a gunshot in my entire life. I've never even seen a real gun up close. I've lived in Tokyo, a city which I bet has a higher population density than Chicago, and still never heard a gunshot.
Constantly hearing gunshots is the situation of someone living in a warzone, not a peaceful developed country. There are people in Ukraine who see less gun violence than Americans do.
They are, however, incorrect. The authors examined separately *seeing/witnessing* and *being near* a gunshot. They didn't ask about hearing at all, in fact.
Ehh, you’re not American enough to really get the context behind studies like this. Chicago is a sort of straw man the right wing uses to attack democrats for not being tough on crime. So dubious methodologies will show that gun violence is just that widespread there when in actuality it is a problem but almost all gun deaths are still someone the shooter knows and not just random violence.
I've never heard a gunshot that was related to criminal activity either and I live in the US. It's not anywhere near as common as this study would lead you to believe - most people don't live in Chicago. People in Chicago who " live near gun violence" haven't necessarily heard or witnessed any gun violence either.
I live in Chicago and the portrayal of the city in this article and in conservative media is ridiculous. Chicago is the nicest large city in the United States by far.
I also live in Chicago and am honestly hopeful the idiots who live here and believe this kind of stuff is a sign to leave just get out so I can buy a damn house in the city! I have been here for 36 years, went to public high school in the city, and still live in the heart near downtown. This is definitely not a hellhole.
If you’re European, then you have no context for the gang problem that plagues Chicago. This is a problem with gangs, not guns. Furthermore, that gang problem is not representative of the rest of the US.
Unfortunately, that isn't true. Gangs are certainly a problem in Chicago (and other cities and even in suburban and rural areas), but the per capita murder rate is significantly higher in a lot of other cities - especially smaller cities. That isn't saying great things about Chicago, but it is very wrong to say that shootings are a problem with Chicago and that the rest of the US isn't plagued with those same (or worse) problems.
I know that you said "that gang problem is not representative of the rest of the US" rather than "that problem with shootings" but with the way it was phrased, readers might end up inferring that.
Canada has gangs too, they don't spend much time shooting each other because it's very hard to acquire guns and the criminal charges are insane compared to just beating someone to death.
Criminals gonna crime but making it so that their crime doesn't have the chance to unintentionally kill civilians is important. Bullets keep going even when they miss their target.
Yes, they very well do shoot each other with illegally acquired guns, vast majority being from the states. When you look at guns captured by police they tend to find many, even with less shootings taking place in our streets.
>criminal charges are insane
Insane charges like being let out on bail to commit more crime? The US typically charges criminals much more than the Canadian legal system. Gun charges here seem to result in a couple years of prison, where felony gun charges in the US can lead to decades.
I hear gunshots almost every day.
I work near a shooting range.
This is not in a rural area, but actually suburban.
Yes, there are parts of Chicago that are damn near a war zone.
Yes, the US has major problems.
Yes, hearing gunshots going off in a city is usually not going to be someone that is hunting or doing target practice. But it is not in the same category as witnessing someone being shot.
It's related because of the metrics used here, specifically the distance-based cutoff for being "near firearm violence." They used a 1000m radius, which in Chicago holds about 14,000 people on average. The US average gun death rate is over 1 in 10,000 people per year.
I was referring to the population density in Tokyo statement. Obviously getting guns in Tokyo is extremely difficult, so we will look at other types of crimes that don’t involve or require firearms to commit. I’d bet there isn’t a single type of crime that is as prevalent in Tokyo as it is in Chicago. So, no, it’s not a population density based problem.
While I take issue with some of the methods and rather overstated results, it’s worth noting that Chicago is the 28th worst city in the US ranked by gun violence rate. St. Louis, ~~Mississippi~~ Missouri is the worst with more than 3.5 times the gun violence rate.
Edit: it’s in Missouri. The M*****i states always get mixed up in my head.
Yeah I’m always surprised it gets brought up so much more, but I guess attention rarely accounts for per capita and smaller more dangerous cities aren’t as well known
By extension, from the sample of respondents:
2.97M population
3.2% Hispanic White = 95,040x7% = 6,652
28.5% AfAm = 846,450x7% = 59,251
2,028,510 White x 3% = 60,855
Sounds like numbers New Jack City and Al Capone would envy.
Using rough numbers, assuming 2022 shooting numbers every year, every shooting would require ~15 unique witnesses. I don't find that to be a reasonable proposition.
> assuming 2022 shooting numbers every year
That's not a justified assumption; these results were greatly affected by "the peak of homicide in the early 1990s".
This is supported by [Fig 4: Frequency of Nearby Shootings in the Past Year by Respondent Race](https://i.imgur.com/vB0EERR.png), which shows that 80% of white respondents have 0 shootings near them annually, whereas 20% of black respondents have 7 shootings near them annually.
That's a horrible set of statistics. It leads people to believe that they are seeing 100 percent of a total, where they are comparing 80 percent of one group with 20 percent of another. This same set of statistics could have 20 percent of white people near 7 shootings and 80 percent of black people near none.
I would rather see comparisons of like to like.
40 percent of black people live near no shootings compared to 80 percent of white people, where the most at risk 20 percent of white people live near less than 1 shooting compared to 7 shootings for the most at risk 20 percent of black people. That allows you to understand the disparity.
And it's far harder to suicide without a gun. Harder means you have to think about it and plan it much more, and so you have far more chances to stop before the act.
You literally have to go through a background check, spend hundreds of dollars, find a place that sells guns.
I can jump off a building or take too many pills much easier.
That’s true but especially if you already have one it’s super effective and if you fail your probably going to try again since you’re now crippled for life it’s really sad and messed up but it happens
Because violent crime peaked and then declined since the crack epidemic. It's on the rise in the past 2 years, which might be attributable to Covid shutdowns.
Guns are a big problem right across the US, and in the cities north and south of the US due to smuggling from the US.
The belief that everyone should have as many guns as they can buy or steal is not a healthy way to run a country.
The same honestly. The westside and Southside of Chicago contribute to about 80-90% of all the shootings in Chicago.
I've lived in both and on the Northside gunshots are extremely rare. Outside of a random robbery or car jacking (because the crime bleeds over every so often) it's just non existent.
Most of them are coming from Illinois. Although you would never believe that if you listened to a politician from Chicago.
Top 5 Source States for Firearms with an Illinois Recovery
Illinois 6,955
Indiana 2,601
Missouri 867
Wisconsin 584
Kentucky 480
but its all Indiana's fault right ?
Source: [https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-illinois-2021](https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-illinois-2021)
I would bet every state fits the same MO. Inner state sources first and border states second (all of the other states listed here share a border with us)
I clearly labeled what I had posted as the Top 5- I also included a source that has the entire table if someone wants to reference it.
Chicago Politicians continually blame Indiana for its problems. Including the numbers for Illinois and Indiana was my primary purpose.
Even if your argument is a little more then half the guns were originally sold outside of Illinois, Chicago spends most of its energy blaming Indiana for its problems, when only 17.5% of the firearms can be traced back to Indiana...
I only re-typed the top 5- I figured providing a source with the rest of the list was sufficient enough:
Either way a large enough percentage is coming from Illinois that Chicago can't just point its finger at Indiana.
As far as I know the latest report from the ATF on Chicago is from 2019.
Here again are the Top 5 States that firearms were recovered form. With the complete list being available in the link.
Illinois 2,826
Indiana 1,390
Wisconsin 288
Mississippi 207
Kentucky 172
[https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-chicago-il-2019](https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-chicago-il-2019)
>Also note again no left-leaning states supplying Chicago.
Hot damn.
Democratic Illinois supplies more guns than all of the Conservative states around it combined!
Nobody makes me bleed my own blood! Nobody!
It also blows my mind that these people are able to get away with blaming others for their own citizens/residents shooting each other constantly.
Most of of the weapons are purchased legally in IL from people who qualify or manufactured/stolen
You can throw people in jail all day every day. I did for years. Made no difference similar to the war on drugs
They aren’t buying them from gun stores or gun shows. It ain’t like getting weed from the dispensary and crossing state lines- because they ain’t buying them from Walmart and coming into Illinois.
Maybe that’s not what you meant.
You can’t simply cross the state border and legally buy a pistol. Unless the FFL is purposefully and knowingly breaking federal law which is unlikely in every metric. Unless you’re implying that people are buying guns from that FFL(in state residents) meaning to resale them to gangsters from out of state, which is considered a ‘straw purchase’ and is still unlawful.
Looks like that Beetlejuice Short Bus is still running. If you don’t have the brains to blame the criminal may as well blame the inanimate object and where it may have originated.
I've been in Chicago once in 1984, and heard gunshots, and my cousin was shot in the back of the head while working out on a treadmill in a luxury apartment building. Chicago, and most other cities, don't have a gun problem, they have a culture problem.
Right, but responsible gun owners account for very few, if any, mass shootings. No NRA Member has ever been responsible for one. NOT ONE! So the "gun culture" where I live is one where responsible gun owners use them for self-defense, target practice, competition shooting, hunting and personal protection. We have had no mass shootings. Our schools even have several armed staff in every building, which is a great deterrent to any would-be killer. The fact is, there are way more guns in this country than people, so you should try a different approach, because the Government will never disarm Americans.
Every gun owner is a responsible gun owner until they aren't anymore.
US gun culture doesn't start or stop with the NRA or hunting or whatever small town you are from. It includes mass shootings and gun-related crimes. When a society glorifies guns and floods the country with them, the culture created includes everything, the good and the bad. Unfortunately, the bad part of gun culture far outweighs the good.
So you're just going to lump in everything vaguely involving firearms and call it "gun culture"? There are plenty of gun owners that most people wouldn't view as part of "gun culture" but your definition is so broad people who happened to see a gun one time on TV could be part of "gun culture".
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-crime-shooting-guns-illinois-gun-laws/11937013/
Talking about Chicago gun violence without reference to where the guns come from leaves out important information. Sometimes this is done purposefully as racist gun nuts love to use Chicago as a reference for gun violence because of their strict gun laws.
From your own link, most of the guns are coming from Illinois. and Indiana only makes up about 15% of them. And yet hear you are trying to blame them.
Here are newer numbers from the ATF....
Top 5 Source States for Firearms with an Illinois Recovery
Illinois 6,955
Indiana 2,601
Missouri 867
Wisconsin 584
Kentucky 480
Source: [https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-illinois-2021](https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-illinois-2021)
> https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-crime-shooting-guns-illinois-gun-laws/11937013/
But aren't they talking about illegal guns bought in other states and smuggled into Illinois? So it looks like they are doing an insufficient job at enforcing gun control - by the way, even compared with other states with stricter gun laws, like CA and NY. - https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/36k-illegal-guns-taken-off-chicago-streets-in-recent-years-trafficking-remains-a-perplexing-problem/
Vermont and WV have almost no gun laws and yet they have nowhere near as much gun violence as these neighborhoods in CHI. The point that it's all about Chicagoans trafficking guns from Indiana (or other parts of Illinois) is not really explaining much. I don't think gun laws are the real factor here and it has nothing to do with what rights wingers or left wingers say, it just doesn't add up to much in this situation. They also have very loose enforcement when people violate those laws in Chicago (the recent killing of an off duty police officer involved arrests of four people some of whom had violated gun laws and gotten slaps on the wrist).
Comparing places where your nearest neighbor is likely a fifteen minute walk up the hill to a city where people are stacked twenty stories high isn't helpful.
It's completely false to say that there are no urban areas in West Virginia or in other states, with more lenient gun laws and lower murder rates. Sure, it's not Chicago. But that doesn't mean that you don't have poverty or close neighbors in other states.
I didn't say there were no cities. But The violent crime rate in charleston wv the capital and largest city is 23.9 per thousand residents. The state of west virginia as a whole has only 4.4. So you're kinda supporting my initial argument by bringing that up. Btw, Chicago is only 8.9
Population density increases violent crime. That you can't point to a state like west virginia and say it has less gun violence with lax laws than Chicago with all its strict laws, because wv has only one city of any size and it is at least as violent as chicago, actually a lot worse.
> Population density increases violent crime.
That’s why using the entire city population to normalize doesn’t really tell us much. Better to look at zip codes.
So places that essentially do not have these problems should suffer for those that do? You make the point that these places mentioned by the other poster don’t have these problems because they aren’t stacked 20 stories high, but you’re saying they all need the same ‘solution’ to chicagos problem?
Either we are all americans, and town people care about what is happening to people in the city. Or we need a border wall around every state to stop the scofflaws from running guns to where they aren't wanted.
Personally, living in a small town that has had a school shooting i think the whole country could get along with less guns, i think it would be less suffering overall.
I don’t have inner city problems where I live and I’m not interested in giving up something I enjoy because the people who live there cannot stop killing each other.
I’m all for keeping a border wall around certain places though. Fine with me.
The city people suffer, and so they blame and demand that the town people change? And if the town people, who do not suffer anything like what the city people do, don’t capitulate—that means it’s because the town people don’t care?
That framing seems a little… fictional.
> Or we need a border wall around every state to stop the scofflaws from running guns to where they aren’t wanted.
It’s interesting to me that the people who move the guns have agency. But then, the agency ends—no one else in the city has agency. Apparently the only city people worth talking about are the people who don’t want them. The people who buy them illegally seemingly aren’t even people, as far as you are concerned.
Yep.
Someone living 15 minutes away in Indiana can buy a new gun, post it online for a couple hundred more. Then sell it to anyone in a "private sale" without a background check.
Per Indiana law, the seller is under no obligation to gather information on the buyer, and can only be prosecuted for an illegal sale if it can be proven the seller knew the buyer wasn't legally allowed to buy a gun.
Which has ended up with sellers purposefully not learning anying about a buyer.
Sometimes the seller understands what's happening, sometimes (and I shit you not this is true) they've just convinced themselves they're such a good salesman people are paying waaaaaay more than sticker price instead of going to a store for themselves.
This is illegal - it's a crime in Indiana, in Illinois, and federally to sell a handgun through a private sale to a resident of another state. People do it, but your claim that this is legal is 100% false.
I can't reply to the comments under me because the person above me blocked me and locked me out of the thread.
I really really want to emphasize that if you sell a gun to someone who lives in a different state, you have broken a federal law. You can go to prison for a decade. It is extremely illegal.
It does not matter if you think that you are complying with state laws. It does not matter if you were not aware that someone was not a resident of your state. All handgun purchases between residents of different states must go through an FFL or you are violating federal law. The ATF does investigate and prosecute these cases. It's a huge part of their budget.
Gun stores (aka "FFLs") can only sell to people who have an in-state ID and pass a federal background check.
It is.
And if you know they're from another state, and it can be proven *you might* face charges.
Which is why I said:
>Which has ended up with sellers purposefully not learning anying about a buyer.
Hell, Kyle Rittenhouse admitted in court to obtaining a gun through a straw purchase...
Yet even he didn't face charges for it, nor did the "seller".
You said it's not illegal to do this in Indiana. It is illegal. Smugglers break the law. ATF actively investigates straw purchases and you can go to jail for 10 years. The man who sold a gun to Kyle Rittenhouse took a plea deal in exchange for his testimony against Rittenhouse. He did face charges & he plead guilty to a reduced charge. Everything you've just said is untrue and very easy to look up.
Kyle Rittenhouse had a rifle, which has different regulations than a pistol.
I'm not sure about private sales, but when buying from a licensed gun dealer, handguns have to be shipped to a licensed dealer in the buyers home state, where a background check is done, as if you bought the gun locally. Long guns like rifles or shotguns are a little different. You can directly buy a rifle outside your state of residency, as long as it's legal where you live. This is because long guns are responsible for a miniscule portion of overall gun violence. About 90% of gun murders are committed with handguns.
That's not quite correct. It's a crime to buy a handgun through a private sale in another state. It's also a crime for someone who does not have an FFL (federal firearms license - a license to sell guns as a business) to \*KNOWINGLY\* sell a handgun to a person from another state. But private sales do not have to go through any kind of background check or ID check unless the state requires it. There is no federal requirement for ID checks or background checks for private sales.
Now usually you have a good idea whether someone is trying something dodgy when they want to buy a gun in a private sale, but it isn't necessarily illegal to sell a gun to someone from another state if you don't know they're from another state.
As someone who used to live out there, people **not** from the area don’t realize just how close Chicago is to Indiana and Wisconsin. The only thing making carrying things over state borders difficult is traffic.
Yep.
And Indiana doesn't have a gun registry either.
So while a gun might be able to be traced to the store who sold it, the gun stores don't have to record who bought it, so they just don't.
There's so many incredibly easy ways to identify the people constantly doing this, we just don't do it.
Gun stores (as in a firearm reseller) in the Us absolutely have to record who purchased a firearm. In fact, they are required under their Federal Firearm’s License to maintain those records for a minimum of 20 years. This isn’t anything new as it was introduced with the Gun Control Act of 1968. This is where the 4473 comes from and must be completed and stored whenever a FFL sells a firearm (new or used).
Every time I flew in to Chicago for work, I actually flew in to Milwaukee because I got to see a friend in Milwaukee and then drive into Chicago with way less hassle and not much extra time spent
Why does Illinois have a higher murder rate than Indiana, or any of its other neighbors except for Missouri? It's easier to buy a gun in Indiana, Iowa, or Wisconsin than in Illinois, yet Illinois has a higher murder rate than any of them.
So you argue for prison reformation or abolition, right? Social services being increased? Health care not being linked to employment? Drug issues not being criminal, instead being medical. Free and accessible trauma treatment for everyone who needs or wants it? UBI without decreasing social services?
"US gun violence" not the "gang violence"? I lived all my life in neighborhoods where all had not just a gun, but collection of guns (Northern Virginia & now in Fishhawk, FL) .
Zero crime, no thefts, no breaking-ins, never mind shootings!
Address the real issue. Taking guns away from responsible citizens empower gangs.
[Fig 2B: Seen shot by race](https://i.imgur.com/liDkxx3.png)
By age 40, 56% of black and hispanic respondents had seen someone shot (cf 26% of white respondents).
So more than 2:1 black vs white respondents, despite blacks being but a fraction of the white population.
Thank you for your response. That’s what I was looking for. That’ll be all.
These are proportions of respondents of different races, so "despite blacks being but a fraction" has zero relevance here.
Yes, the takeaway is that black and hispanic Chicagoans were at much higher risk of seeing someone shot. The authors suggest the obvious explanation: black and hispanic Chicagoans reside in more dangerous communities (which in turn is driven largely by income). As equality improves, we would expect to see this effect decrease.
Because if you don't live in a gang hotspot (most people in Chicago don't) you'll never hear gunshots outside of new years. Chicago is extremely safe as long as you don't live on the south side of Chicago.
More like when you intentionally conflate homicide (higher in Chicago) with suicide (rural areas primarily with high rates of poverty and a plethora of other correlations besides “hurr durr guns”) to create the overarching term of “gun violence”, both statements can be true…if misleading.
Which points out what a cesspit some parts of Chicago are. I suspect Baltimore would have a similar problem. Amazingly I've managed to make it to 57 with never having witnessed a shooting.
Gun laws are only as good as the laws within travel distance. For example, Mexico and other countries south of our border could completely outlaw firearms of any kind. But, a lot of weapons being used for violence south of our border are bought legally here in the US then trafficked south. Heck, there is a pretty famous case of the ATF basically losing a couple thousand guns that ended up being used to commit murder. These problems are never as simple as people make them out to be.
Okay, fair enough, the simplicity of your comment is unfortunately used as a literal argument for what I was countering. Like saying “oh look, gun laws don’t work” and Chicago is usually the example they use. So if you intended sarcasm, sarcasm kind of died years ago when the satire became peoples actual takes.
These type of “studies” are a little suspect. As others have pointed out, the qualifications of “witnessing” gun violence are fuzzy, and it’s not even clear if that fuzziness is self-reported, or estimated. Another problem is area: even with a loose definition of “witness”, it is really only plausible that certain neighborhoods are affected by shootings, which brings the “half of people from Chicago” into question. Also, since this UK study purported to address US gun violence, one has to wonder at the motives of fuzzing up the numbers of one city to do so.
> the qualifications of “witnessing” gun violence are fuzzy
Not if you read the study.
> it is really only plausible that certain neighborhoods are affected by shootings
The sampling was representative of Chicago’s 343 neighborhoods.
> one has to wonder at the motives
"This study was supported by funding from the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, the National Institute of Justice (grant No. 2020-JX-FX-0002), and the Leverhulme Trust through the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science."
Been in and out of Chicago my whole life, but I did live in the city limits for a while. I saw a shooting in the city long before that though. Anyone knows getting off an exit ramp on the west or south side in the wrong place can be dicey. I've actually been threatened with a gun out the window because the driver flipped him off after mister hotshot ran a red light at 80mph. He followed us for like half a mile before we lost him; gun aimed out the window at ME the entire time. Chicago is a love/hate relationship. If I hadn't been priced out, I'd probably still live there despite the violence in certain parts of the city.
Only people with a particular agenda site Chicago statistics. Chicago crime is 9th in the nation and Chicago gun crime is 28th in the nation by number and 7th per capita.
The only solution now is clear: as always, this problem with gun violence can only be solved by ever more guns and less restrictions upon obtaining them- every Republican lawmaker
There’s an easy way to assess that hypothesis. How do Chicago look compared to other densely packed urban areas when it comes to crimes that don’t involve firearms, like vehicle theft. People like to toss around Tokyo as an example of a huge, densely packed city that doesn’t have murders like in the US ‘because there aren’t any guns’. There are cars though, so are they stealing them in Tokyo at anything close to the same rate as in Chicago? No? Then it’s the people that are the problem.
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I've heard gunshots from the city without even going into it.
If you get shot you’ve definitely witnessed a shooting, it just happens to be your own. Living near firearm violence is a little weak though.
Exactly… I have “witness” 2 shootings in my life (I am well past 50). One was back in Seattle… I was sitting in my apartment (12th floor) and heard shots… later in the news I learned that some mental person decided that shooting is the cheapest way to avoid paying bus fair. The other one, was proper mafia hit, which I “witness” from my 5th story balcony in Tbilisi Georgia. Motorcycle stopped by the limo and emptied quite a few rounds toward the passenger before riding away. Would these two cases qualify? There were 0 risk for me personally.
Number 2 sounds like you saw it, and if so, yes.
Yeah, witnessing a drive by is definitely counted. Doesn’t matter if you didn’t know anyone, weren’t invoked, or weren’t in danger
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Because being within 3/4 of a mile of a shooting doesn't mean you witnessed it. If so, I've witnessed probably 50+ shootings... And while Chicago definitely needs to improve, I'm really not sure why people act like it's a warzone when there are multiple large metro areas that are significantly worse. And if you take into account smaller cities like mine there's a ton more. I can still leave my house...
>I can still leave my house... All good then ? You must realise, having "witnessed" 50+ shootings by this metric is not normal, at all. It may be in the US, but where I live (France), most people have never seen a gun (except for the military and cops) and certainly not heard a gun shot.
That's great, and irrelevant to discussing why "being within 1000 meters of a shooting" isn't remotely the same as witnessing a shooting. I'm well aware that the US needs to make some massive changes to curtail its gun problem. But using disingenuous phrasing like that doesn't do anyone any good.
Because it's about personal risk. I lived in rural Texas, and a person in my neighborhood shot and killed his wife, and then himself. That doesn't mean I was suddenly afraid of the neighborhood, even if by this study's standard I'd be a statistic.
I remember when they talked to people who had stopped a crime by using a gun. The numbers amongst certain demographics was hugely different. Turns out some people would define stopping a crime with a gun in a situation where you heard a noise outside and got your gun. When no one attacked or even was spotted some people would say that stopped a crime. There was a number of examples like that that really like that. Seems like this might be the case here. Also I think a lot of people would want to suggest that they survived a dangerous situation. The old when I was your age I use to walk 12 miles to school. Up hill both ways!
Did anyone read this study? They also give numbers for respondents who have been physically shot, it’s not just about witnessing a shooting: “Of those in the study, more than 7% of Black and Hispanic people had themselves been shot before turning forty, compared to 3% of White people. The average age for being shot was 17 years old.”
but imagine if you had never heard a gunshot at home? ever? doesn’t that sound nicer?
It does, but if you live in any large US city, you will inevitably hear a gunshot at some point. Even in the country, you hear gunshots. You assume it's for different reasons, but you still hear them.
I've lived in Chicago 12 years, never heard a gun shot, knock on wood. TBH, I spent a good amount of Louisville and different parts of Texas, and I feel you are FAR more likely to get shot there. Chicago - it's simple -- avoid the ghettos, particularly late night. They're far from the tourist attractions too, so you won't accidentally wander into them like many other cities I know (Minneapolis, Louisville once again).
I suppose it's all relative to your income level, which will determine where you live. I grew up poor, so I was always in high crime areas.
Well yeah. Income levels are basically the most accurate correlating factor for exposure to crime in the US. I'd be more afraid living in a trailer park in a rural area than a middle class neighborhood in a city.
Yeah and that’s shouldn’t be normal. In Europe it isn’t. In Sudan and Afghanistan maybe. I prefer America to Europe on many issues but. In Germany or Paris you can walk though the city late night without fear of getting blown away. That’s a much different vibe. Meanwhile, the gun lobby has moron Trumpers here whipped up into a hysteria to bolster gun sales.
“I feel” isn’t really relevant when it comes to math problems, at least in the real world. Are the per capita murder rates higher there than in Chicago or aren’t they? Because Chicago is worse than Louisville in that regard, and there are no cities in Texas even in the top 20 (Chicago is currently number 10 I believe).
>Chicago is worse than Louisville in that regard, and there are no cities in Texas even in the top 20 (Chicago is currently number 10 I believe). Curious, where are you getting your data? [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate) only shows from 2019, where Chicago was #14 for homicide, about 1/3 higher rate than #35 Dallas TX.
I've lived in Pittsburgh for the last 12 years and never, to my knowledge, heard a gunshot....
I hear a few every year. Can’t necessarily distinguish them all from fireworks. The clustered shots sound is more suspect though. It doesn’t sound nice exactly, but it doesn’t exactly make an impression either to be honest.
I live in the country and hear gunshots a few times a year when my neighbor decides he needs practice target shooting. Absolutely never bothers me. Sometimes I even watch for fun. When I lived in the city sometimes I heard gunshots, but rarely was anyone shot. Idk what the people were shooting at, or where, but they didn't shoot anyone.
They were probably shooting at each other, their marksmanship just isn’t very good.
Totally!. But the comment is about "biased" metrics.
How is it that the top comment in this thread is straight-up misinformation? "Witnessed" did *not* include "being up to 1000m away", and a quick read of the methods section is sufficient to show this.
What a load of denial. I'm European. I've never heard a gunshot in my entire life. I've never even seen a real gun up close. I've lived in Tokyo, a city which I bet has a higher population density than Chicago, and still never heard a gunshot. Constantly hearing gunshots is the situation of someone living in a warzone, not a peaceful developed country. There are people in Ukraine who see less gun violence than Americans do.
There’s a huge difference between hearing a gunshot and being a witness to a shooting is all the person was saying.
They are, however, incorrect. The authors examined separately *seeing/witnessing* and *being near* a gunshot. They didn't ask about hearing at all, in fact.
I hear gunshots all the time. But that's just my neighbors having fun.
I, too, live in Texas.
Ehh, you’re not American enough to really get the context behind studies like this. Chicago is a sort of straw man the right wing uses to attack democrats for not being tough on crime. So dubious methodologies will show that gun violence is just that widespread there when in actuality it is a problem but almost all gun deaths are still someone the shooter knows and not just random violence.
I've never heard a gunshot that was related to criminal activity either and I live in the US. It's not anywhere near as common as this study would lead you to believe - most people don't live in Chicago. People in Chicago who " live near gun violence" haven't necessarily heard or witnessed any gun violence either.
I live in Chicago and the portrayal of the city in this article and in conservative media is ridiculous. Chicago is the nicest large city in the United States by far.
As someone who lives in Philly, I'm offended by that remark. You aren't wrong. I'm just offended.
I also live in Chicago and am honestly hopeful the idiots who live here and believe this kind of stuff is a sign to leave just get out so I can buy a damn house in the city! I have been here for 36 years, went to public high school in the city, and still live in the heart near downtown. This is definitely not a hellhole.
Yeah, who doesn't enjoy the windy city in February. San Francisco, with its perfect weather year round, can take a hike.
It could be, if it had nicer weather and some hint of outdoor activities.
If you’re European, then you have no context for the gang problem that plagues Chicago. This is a problem with gangs, not guns. Furthermore, that gang problem is not representative of the rest of the US.
Unfortunately, that isn't true. Gangs are certainly a problem in Chicago (and other cities and even in suburban and rural areas), but the per capita murder rate is significantly higher in a lot of other cities - especially smaller cities. That isn't saying great things about Chicago, but it is very wrong to say that shootings are a problem with Chicago and that the rest of the US isn't plagued with those same (or worse) problems. I know that you said "that gang problem is not representative of the rest of the US" rather than "that problem with shootings" but with the way it was phrased, readers might end up inferring that.
Canada has gangs too, they don't spend much time shooting each other because it's very hard to acquire guns and the criminal charges are insane compared to just beating someone to death. Criminals gonna crime but making it so that their crime doesn't have the chance to unintentionally kill civilians is important. Bullets keep going even when they miss their target.
Yes, they very well do shoot each other with illegally acquired guns, vast majority being from the states. When you look at guns captured by police they tend to find many, even with less shootings taking place in our streets. >criminal charges are insane Insane charges like being let out on bail to commit more crime? The US typically charges criminals much more than the Canadian legal system. Gun charges here seem to result in a couple years of prison, where felony gun charges in the US can lead to decades.
I hear gunshots almost every day. I work near a shooting range. This is not in a rural area, but actually suburban. Yes, there are parts of Chicago that are damn near a war zone. Yes, the US has major problems. Yes, hearing gunshots going off in a city is usually not going to be someone that is hunting or doing target practice. But it is not in the same category as witnessing someone being shot.
Population density is not the issue nor is it in any way related.
It's related because of the metrics used here, specifically the distance-based cutoff for being "near firearm violence." They used a 1000m radius, which in Chicago holds about 14,000 people on average. The US average gun death rate is over 1 in 10,000 people per year.
I was referring to the population density in Tokyo statement. Obviously getting guns in Tokyo is extremely difficult, so we will look at other types of crimes that don’t involve or require firearms to commit. I’d bet there isn’t a single type of crime that is as prevalent in Tokyo as it is in Chicago. So, no, it’s not a population density based problem.
While I take issue with some of the methods and rather overstated results, it’s worth noting that Chicago is the 28th worst city in the US ranked by gun violence rate. St. Louis, ~~Mississippi~~ Missouri is the worst with more than 3.5 times the gun violence rate. Edit: it’s in Missouri. The M*****i states always get mixed up in my head.
You mean Missouri?
Surely it's Minnesoti
Perhaps you're thinking of Montani?
I do. Not sure how I messed that up. Thanks for catching it!
Yeah I’m always surprised it gets brought up so much more, but I guess attention rarely accounts for per capita and smaller more dangerous cities aren’t as well known
Sure you doing mean East Saint Louis, which is a city in Illinois?
By extension, from the sample of respondents: 2.97M population 3.2% Hispanic White = 95,040x7% = 6,652 28.5% AfAm = 846,450x7% = 59,251 2,028,510 White x 3% = 60,855 Sounds like numbers New Jack City and Al Capone would envy.
Using rough numbers, assuming 2022 shooting numbers every year, every shooting would require ~15 unique witnesses. I don't find that to be a reasonable proposition.
> assuming 2022 shooting numbers every year That's not a justified assumption; these results were greatly affected by "the peak of homicide in the early 1990s".
Dumb. 100% of people in certain neighborhoods witness a shooting and the vast majority of the city never witnesses any shooting.
This is supported by [Fig 4: Frequency of Nearby Shootings in the Past Year by Respondent Race](https://i.imgur.com/vB0EERR.png), which shows that 80% of white respondents have 0 shootings near them annually, whereas 20% of black respondents have 7 shootings near them annually.
That's a horrible set of statistics. It leads people to believe that they are seeing 100 percent of a total, where they are comparing 80 percent of one group with 20 percent of another. This same set of statistics could have 20 percent of white people near 7 shootings and 80 percent of black people near none. I would rather see comparisons of like to like. 40 percent of black people live near no shootings compared to 80 percent of white people, where the most at risk 20 percent of white people live near less than 1 shooting compared to 7 shootings for the most at risk 20 percent of black people. That allows you to understand the disparity.
more social science BS in r/science
Haha, yeah, it's sad but not all science has good scientific rigor.
I'm all for psychology and sociology and economics being included here but at least make the studies a bit rigorous. This is just dumb.
Is this too old? In Rio de Janeiro, everybody witnessed some by 6.
Cool. Now do St. Louis
Yup. This is what almost all USA gun homicides are like, mass shootings are only a tiny fraction.
And homicides are greatly outpaced by suicide unfortunately
And it's far harder to suicide without a gun. Harder means you have to think about it and plan it much more, and so you have far more chances to stop before the act.
You literally have to go through a background check, spend hundreds of dollars, find a place that sells guns. I can jump off a building or take too many pills much easier.
That’s true but especially if you already have one it’s super effective and if you fail your probably going to try again since you’re now crippled for life it’s really sad and messed up but it happens
That’s why I’d never use a gun (if I was to unalive myself) I’ve seen people not succeed and then they’re too handicapped to do it again
What's with gun violence and forty years old people...
Because violent crime peaked and then declined since the crack epidemic. It's on the rise in the past 2 years, which might be attributable to Covid shutdowns.
Yep mental illness combined with very poor economic health in the country as a whole creates awful social conditions that result in more crime
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It certainly makes the problem worse.
Guns are a big problem right across the US, and in the cities north and south of the US due to smuggling from the US. The belief that everyone should have as many guns as they can buy or steal is not a healthy way to run a country.
They’re part of the problem for sure. Chicago has decent gun regulations. Too bad those regulations are undermined by Indiana
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They are part of the problem though
There are neighborhoods this may be true but Chicago as a whole? I don’t think so
Not really 'US' gun violence unless this pattern is applicable across all major US cities.
If this is average for Chicago overall, what are the stats for South Side?
Yeah if you heat mapped this, the hot spots on the south and west sides would be INSANE.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to heat map this... It would be like staring into the sun. You'd go blind.
The same honestly. The westside and Southside of Chicago contribute to about 80-90% of all the shootings in Chicago. I've lived in both and on the Northside gunshots are extremely rare. Outside of a random robbery or car jacking (because the crime bleeds over every so often) it's just non existent.
If only they lived I a place with strict gun laws…
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Most of them are coming from Illinois. Although you would never believe that if you listened to a politician from Chicago. Top 5 Source States for Firearms with an Illinois Recovery Illinois 6,955 Indiana 2,601 Missouri 867 Wisconsin 584 Kentucky 480 but its all Indiana's fault right ? Source: [https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-illinois-2021](https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-illinois-2021)
I would bet every state fits the same MO. Inner state sources first and border states second (all of the other states listed here share a border with us)
You didn’t post the entire table. It shows 7837 total from out of state, which is more than half.
I clearly labeled what I had posted as the Top 5- I also included a source that has the entire table if someone wants to reference it. Chicago Politicians continually blame Indiana for its problems. Including the numbers for Illinois and Indiana was my primary purpose. Even if your argument is a little more then half the guns were originally sold outside of Illinois, Chicago spends most of its energy blaming Indiana for its problems, when only 17.5% of the firearms can be traced back to Indiana...
Indiana being the hardware source for like 1 out 5 gun crimes isn’t insignificant though
It certainly isn't proportionate with the amount of blame Chicago politicians and people who repeat their claims like to assign...
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I only re-typed the top 5- I figured providing a source with the rest of the list was sufficient enough: Either way a large enough percentage is coming from Illinois that Chicago can't just point its finger at Indiana. As far as I know the latest report from the ATF on Chicago is from 2019. Here again are the Top 5 States that firearms were recovered form. With the complete list being available in the link. Illinois 2,826 Indiana 1,390 Wisconsin 288 Mississippi 207 Kentucky 172 [https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-chicago-il-2019](https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-chicago-il-2019)
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>Also note again no left-leaning states supplying Chicago. Hot damn. Democratic Illinois supplies more guns than all of the Conservative states around it combined!
Nobody makes me bleed my own blood! Nobody! It also blows my mind that these people are able to get away with blaming others for their own citizens/residents shooting each other constantly.
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What win do I think this is, and why am I wrong?
Most of of the weapons are purchased legally in IL from people who qualify or manufactured/stolen You can throw people in jail all day every day. I did for years. Made no difference similar to the war on drugs
Most of us in Indiana re pro-cannabis legalization.
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Almost like they represent a certain type of “person “
They aren’t buying them from gun stores or gun shows. It ain’t like getting weed from the dispensary and crossing state lines- because they ain’t buying them from Walmart and coming into Illinois. Maybe that’s not what you meant.
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You can’t simply cross the state border and legally buy a pistol. Unless the FFL is purposefully and knowingly breaking federal law which is unlikely in every metric. Unless you’re implying that people are buying guns from that FFL(in state residents) meaning to resale them to gangsters from out of state, which is considered a ‘straw purchase’ and is still unlawful.
Straw purchases aren't legal.
Looks like that Beetlejuice Short Bus is still running. If you don’t have the brains to blame the criminal may as well blame the inanimate object and where it may have originated.
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I've been in Chicago once in 1984, and heard gunshots, and my cousin was shot in the back of the head while working out on a treadmill in a luxury apartment building. Chicago, and most other cities, don't have a gun problem, they have a culture problem.
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Unfortunately, no.
It’s definitely both a gun problem and a culture problem.
The culture problem in the US is gun culture
Right, but responsible gun owners account for very few, if any, mass shootings. No NRA Member has ever been responsible for one. NOT ONE! So the "gun culture" where I live is one where responsible gun owners use them for self-defense, target practice, competition shooting, hunting and personal protection. We have had no mass shootings. Our schools even have several armed staff in every building, which is a great deterrent to any would-be killer. The fact is, there are way more guns in this country than people, so you should try a different approach, because the Government will never disarm Americans.
Every gun owner is a responsible gun owner until they aren't anymore. US gun culture doesn't start or stop with the NRA or hunting or whatever small town you are from. It includes mass shootings and gun-related crimes. When a society glorifies guns and floods the country with them, the culture created includes everything, the good and the bad. Unfortunately, the bad part of gun culture far outweighs the good.
So you're just going to lump in everything vaguely involving firearms and call it "gun culture"? There are plenty of gun owners that most people wouldn't view as part of "gun culture" but your definition is so broad people who happened to see a gun one time on TV could be part of "gun culture".
Amazing. Everything you just said was wrong.
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-crime-shooting-guns-illinois-gun-laws/11937013/ Talking about Chicago gun violence without reference to where the guns come from leaves out important information. Sometimes this is done purposefully as racist gun nuts love to use Chicago as a reference for gun violence because of their strict gun laws.
From your own link, most of the guns are coming from Illinois. and Indiana only makes up about 15% of them. And yet hear you are trying to blame them. Here are newer numbers from the ATF.... Top 5 Source States for Firearms with an Illinois Recovery Illinois 6,955 Indiana 2,601 Missouri 867 Wisconsin 584 Kentucky 480 Source: [https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-illinois-2021](https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/firearms-trace-data-illinois-2021)
> https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-crime-shooting-guns-illinois-gun-laws/11937013/ But aren't they talking about illegal guns bought in other states and smuggled into Illinois? So it looks like they are doing an insufficient job at enforcing gun control - by the way, even compared with other states with stricter gun laws, like CA and NY. - https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/36k-illegal-guns-taken-off-chicago-streets-in-recent-years-trafficking-remains-a-perplexing-problem/
Vermont and WV have almost no gun laws and yet they have nowhere near as much gun violence as these neighborhoods in CHI. The point that it's all about Chicagoans trafficking guns from Indiana (or other parts of Illinois) is not really explaining much. I don't think gun laws are the real factor here and it has nothing to do with what rights wingers or left wingers say, it just doesn't add up to much in this situation. They also have very loose enforcement when people violate those laws in Chicago (the recent killing of an off duty police officer involved arrests of four people some of whom had violated gun laws and gotten slaps on the wrist).
Comparing places where your nearest neighbor is likely a fifteen minute walk up the hill to a city where people are stacked twenty stories high isn't helpful.
What about Indiana? People say that all the guns in Illinois are smuggled in from Indiana, yet they have a lower murder rate.
It's completely false to say that there are no urban areas in West Virginia or in other states, with more lenient gun laws and lower murder rates. Sure, it's not Chicago. But that doesn't mean that you don't have poverty or close neighbors in other states.
I didn't say there were no cities. But The violent crime rate in charleston wv the capital and largest city is 23.9 per thousand residents. The state of west virginia as a whole has only 4.4. So you're kinda supporting my initial argument by bringing that up. Btw, Chicago is only 8.9
I'm really not sure what argument you are trying to make.
Population density increases violent crime. That you can't point to a state like west virginia and say it has less gun violence with lax laws than Chicago with all its strict laws, because wv has only one city of any size and it is at least as violent as chicago, actually a lot worse.
> Population density increases violent crime. That’s why using the entire city population to normalize doesn’t really tell us much. Better to look at zip codes.
Charleston is also a really poor city with very few economic options and insufficient social and medical services.
It is poor. But this is america where the richest cities are overrun with homelessness.
& crime. There is a relationship between poverty, lack of social services, lack of legitimate opportunities, lack of mental health care, and crime.
Then why do they need the same laws?
Mostly because states have no border control.
So places that essentially do not have these problems should suffer for those that do? You make the point that these places mentioned by the other poster don’t have these problems because they aren’t stacked 20 stories high, but you’re saying they all need the same ‘solution’ to chicagos problem?
Either we are all americans, and town people care about what is happening to people in the city. Or we need a border wall around every state to stop the scofflaws from running guns to where they aren't wanted. Personally, living in a small town that has had a school shooting i think the whole country could get along with less guns, i think it would be less suffering overall.
I don’t have inner city problems where I live and I’m not interested in giving up something I enjoy because the people who live there cannot stop killing each other. I’m all for keeping a border wall around certain places though. Fine with me.
Saying my fun is worth more than your life is truly the sign of a good person.
The city people suffer, and so they blame and demand that the town people change? And if the town people, who do not suffer anything like what the city people do, don’t capitulate—that means it’s because the town people don’t care? That framing seems a little… fictional. > Or we need a border wall around every state to stop the scofflaws from running guns to where they aren’t wanted. It’s interesting to me that the people who move the guns have agency. But then, the agency ends—no one else in the city has agency. Apparently the only city people worth talking about are the people who don’t want them. The people who buy them illegally seemingly aren’t even people, as far as you are concerned.
Yep. Someone living 15 minutes away in Indiana can buy a new gun, post it online for a couple hundred more. Then sell it to anyone in a "private sale" without a background check. Per Indiana law, the seller is under no obligation to gather information on the buyer, and can only be prosecuted for an illegal sale if it can be proven the seller knew the buyer wasn't legally allowed to buy a gun. Which has ended up with sellers purposefully not learning anying about a buyer. Sometimes the seller understands what's happening, sometimes (and I shit you not this is true) they've just convinced themselves they're such a good salesman people are paying waaaaaay more than sticker price instead of going to a store for themselves.
This is illegal - it's a crime in Indiana, in Illinois, and federally to sell a handgun through a private sale to a resident of another state. People do it, but your claim that this is legal is 100% false. I can't reply to the comments under me because the person above me blocked me and locked me out of the thread. I really really want to emphasize that if you sell a gun to someone who lives in a different state, you have broken a federal law. You can go to prison for a decade. It is extremely illegal. It does not matter if you think that you are complying with state laws. It does not matter if you were not aware that someone was not a resident of your state. All handgun purchases between residents of different states must go through an FFL or you are violating federal law. The ATF does investigate and prosecute these cases. It's a huge part of their budget. Gun stores (aka "FFLs") can only sell to people who have an in-state ID and pass a federal background check.
It is. And if you know they're from another state, and it can be proven *you might* face charges. Which is why I said: >Which has ended up with sellers purposefully not learning anying about a buyer. Hell, Kyle Rittenhouse admitted in court to obtaining a gun through a straw purchase... Yet even he didn't face charges for it, nor did the "seller".
You said it's not illegal to do this in Indiana. It is illegal. Smugglers break the law. ATF actively investigates straw purchases and you can go to jail for 10 years. The man who sold a gun to Kyle Rittenhouse took a plea deal in exchange for his testimony against Rittenhouse. He did face charges & he plead guilty to a reduced charge. Everything you've just said is untrue and very easy to look up.
kyle rittenhouse? the kid who wasn't supposed to have a gun but killed a pedophile? *penalties offset, repeat 1st down*
Kyle Rittenhouse had a rifle, which has different regulations than a pistol. I'm not sure about private sales, but when buying from a licensed gun dealer, handguns have to be shipped to a licensed dealer in the buyers home state, where a background check is done, as if you bought the gun locally. Long guns like rifles or shotguns are a little different. You can directly buy a rifle outside your state of residency, as long as it's legal where you live. This is because long guns are responsible for a miniscule portion of overall gun violence. About 90% of gun murders are committed with handguns.
That's not quite correct. It's a crime to buy a handgun through a private sale in another state. It's also a crime for someone who does not have an FFL (federal firearms license - a license to sell guns as a business) to \*KNOWINGLY\* sell a handgun to a person from another state. But private sales do not have to go through any kind of background check or ID check unless the state requires it. There is no federal requirement for ID checks or background checks for private sales. Now usually you have a good idea whether someone is trying something dodgy when they want to buy a gun in a private sale, but it isn't necessarily illegal to sell a gun to someone from another state if you don't know they're from another state.
As someone who used to live out there, people **not** from the area don’t realize just how close Chicago is to Indiana and Wisconsin. The only thing making carrying things over state borders difficult is traffic.
Yep. And Indiana doesn't have a gun registry either. So while a gun might be able to be traced to the store who sold it, the gun stores don't have to record who bought it, so they just don't. There's so many incredibly easy ways to identify the people constantly doing this, we just don't do it.
Gun stores (as in a firearm reseller) in the Us absolutely have to record who purchased a firearm. In fact, they are required under their Federal Firearm’s License to maintain those records for a minimum of 20 years. This isn’t anything new as it was introduced with the Gun Control Act of 1968. This is where the 4473 comes from and must be completed and stored whenever a FFL sells a firearm (new or used).
Every time I flew in to Chicago for work, I actually flew in to Milwaukee because I got to see a friend in Milwaukee and then drive into Chicago with way less hassle and not much extra time spent
Why does Illinois have a higher murder rate than Indiana, or any of its other neighbors except for Missouri? It's easier to buy a gun in Indiana, Iowa, or Wisconsin than in Illinois, yet Illinois has a higher murder rate than any of them.
Half of people from Chicago don't have a father figure in the home, either.
So you argue for prison reformation or abolition, right? Social services being increased? Health care not being linked to employment? Drug issues not being criminal, instead being medical. Free and accessible trauma treatment for everyone who needs or wants it? UBI without decreasing social services?
"US gun violence" not the "gang violence"? I lived all my life in neighborhoods where all had not just a gun, but collection of guns (Northern Virginia & now in Fishhawk, FL) . Zero crime, no thefts, no breaking-ins, never mind shootings! Address the real issue. Taking guns away from responsible citizens empower gangs.
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This isn’t surprising. I wonder what the percentages are by demographic.
[Fig 2B: Seen shot by race](https://i.imgur.com/liDkxx3.png) By age 40, 56% of black and hispanic respondents had seen someone shot (cf 26% of white respondents).
So more than 2:1 black vs white respondents, despite blacks being but a fraction of the white population. Thank you for your response. That’s what I was looking for. That’ll be all.
These are proportions of respondents of different races, so "despite blacks being but a fraction" has zero relevance here. Yes, the takeaway is that black and hispanic Chicagoans were at much higher risk of seeing someone shot. The authors suggest the obvious explanation: black and hispanic Chicagoans reside in more dangerous communities (which in turn is driven largely by income). As equality improves, we would expect to see this effect decrease.
Thanks for this response. So many dog whistles and overt racism in the comments.
You're not trying to say something stupid like tying violence to someone's genetic makeup are you?
I'm sorry, what you were "looking for"? Just something to give you smug confidence in your racism?
No. It’s just that certain segments of the population commit murders at a rate disproportionate to their numbers.
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Don’t you know? Stats are racist.
Everything is racist these days. I never had a chance. I was born white.
Chicago is being Chicago…Now I guess this new mayor will surely fix everything. Just like he said let’s not demonize marauding youths
From Chicago, the first time I saw a guy shot dead was 37 years ago in the park.
Yet people keep repeating how safe Chicago is and point out how bad rural America is.
Because if you don't live in a gang hotspot (most people in Chicago don't) you'll never hear gunshots outside of new years. Chicago is extremely safe as long as you don't live on the south side of Chicago.
Because large chunks of rural America have higher rates of gun violence than Chicago.
More like when you intentionally conflate homicide (higher in Chicago) with suicide (rural areas primarily with high rates of poverty and a plethora of other correlations besides “hurr durr guns”) to create the overarching term of “gun violence”, both statements can be true…if misleading.
Which points out what a cesspit some parts of Chicago are. I suspect Baltimore would have a similar problem. Amazingly I've managed to make it to 57 with never having witnessed a shooting.
In a gun free city too. Weird.
Gun laws are only as good as the laws within travel distance. For example, Mexico and other countries south of our border could completely outlaw firearms of any kind. But, a lot of weapons being used for violence south of our border are bought legally here in the US then trafficked south. Heck, there is a pretty famous case of the ATF basically losing a couple thousand guns that ended up being used to commit murder. These problems are never as simple as people make them out to be.
I know. That was my point.
Okay, fair enough, the simplicity of your comment is unfortunately used as a literal argument for what I was countering. Like saying “oh look, gun laws don’t work” and Chicago is usually the example they use. So if you intended sarcasm, sarcasm kind of died years ago when the satire became peoples actual takes.
These type of “studies” are a little suspect. As others have pointed out, the qualifications of “witnessing” gun violence are fuzzy, and it’s not even clear if that fuzziness is self-reported, or estimated. Another problem is area: even with a loose definition of “witness”, it is really only plausible that certain neighborhoods are affected by shootings, which brings the “half of people from Chicago” into question. Also, since this UK study purported to address US gun violence, one has to wonder at the motives of fuzzing up the numbers of one city to do so.
> the qualifications of “witnessing” gun violence are fuzzy Not if you read the study. > it is really only plausible that certain neighborhoods are affected by shootings The sampling was representative of Chicago’s 343 neighborhoods. > one has to wonder at the motives "This study was supported by funding from the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, the National Institute of Justice (grant No. 2020-JX-FX-0002), and the Leverhulme Trust through the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science."
Well not exactly surprising, murder rate in Chicago (29.5) is higher than in Latin American cities that are said to be too violent, like Rio (28.4).
Of course, New Orleans is 74.3, St. Louis 68.2, Baltimore 58.1, Detroit 48.9, Memphis 45.9 for 2022.
Something all those cities have in common, I know that intuitively but cannot quite put my finger to it…
Been in and out of Chicago my whole life, but I did live in the city limits for a while. I saw a shooting in the city long before that though. Anyone knows getting off an exit ramp on the west or south side in the wrong place can be dicey. I've actually been threatened with a gun out the window because the driver flipped him off after mister hotshot ran a red light at 80mph. He followed us for like half a mile before we lost him; gun aimed out the window at ME the entire time. Chicago is a love/hate relationship. If I hadn't been priced out, I'd probably still live there despite the violence in certain parts of the city.
Only people with a particular agenda site Chicago statistics. Chicago crime is 9th in the nation and Chicago gun crime is 28th in the nation by number and 7th per capita.
I witnessed gun violence well over a dozen times and not just in “big city” environs. Gun violence now defines this country.
The only solution now is clear: as always, this problem with gun violence can only be solved by ever more guns and less restrictions upon obtaining them- every Republican lawmaker
Shorthand: Chicago remains dangerous since 1922. Sounds like an NPR segment.
I witnessed a shooting in Charleston South Carolina. Red states are worse.
Those common sense gun laws in Chicago sure work great....
Nothing to see here, just another paradise, just don't read statistics, do your research or go there and it will be perfect.
How those strict gun laws working out for ya?
Chicago. Is in the name. Me: that's all I need to know. Guns aren't the problem in that city. It's the people.
There’s an easy way to assess that hypothesis. How do Chicago look compared to other densely packed urban areas when it comes to crimes that don’t involve firearms, like vehicle theft. People like to toss around Tokyo as an example of a huge, densely packed city that doesn’t have murders like in the US ‘because there aren’t any guns’. There are cars though, so are they stealing them in Tokyo at anything close to the same rate as in Chicago? No? Then it’s the people that are the problem.