Category: Crime

It looks like it’s frustrating people who are in a rush to kill themselves. Bitter and I were following this story last night, of a guy in a standoff at our local Dick’s, who held up the counter with a handgun, stole a shotgun, some shotgun ammo, and headed into the bathroom. I told her:

“He’s probably suicidal. I’ll bet he offed himself in the bathroom. Moreover, how much do you want to bet he obtained the 9mm pistol to do the deed, and has been driving around looking for ammo. Frustrated he couldn’t find any, he ends up at Dick’s, who doesn’t have any 9mm ammo either, but they have shotgun shells. Out of options, he uses the empty pistol to hold up the Dick’s to get a shotgun, grabbed some shells from the shelves, and headed to the bathroom to kill himself.”

It’s looking like I was right. I could have saved the cops a lot of trouble. I was going to blog this last night, but Bitter talked me out of it, thinking it was a reaching conclusion. I said “I’ll bet you they find out he had no ammo for that pistol. If they find that, I’m posting it.” What makes this a real tragedy is that someone else is going to have to clean that mess up. To me, if someone wants to off themselves, that’s their business. But please, don’t do it somewhere that someone else gets stuck with the mess. That’s just inconsiderate.

Megan McArdle interviews someone who has actually taken the time to study the issue, and concludes that nothing much will stop mass killings, including gun control. Though I don’t quite understand his assertion that we should do gun control anyway, since it makes sense. Probably some sort of reflexive impulse of academics, to show other academics they are still right thinking people.

It works. (Why is it that they are called “resource officers?” It’s an odd use of the word.) I think a lot of  the people who oppose putting armed guards in schools do so because they don’t really want to believe we live in a society where there’s a perceived need to do such things.

I’m not personally convinced of the urgent necessity, because mass shootings in school are rare, despite all the press attention they receive. If you made a cold, hard calculation, you’d probably save society more violence if you used that money to get more cops chasing criminals, rather than use it to park one in a school all day waiting for a mass killer who will, except through very long odds, never come. But many people are unwilling to accept that there are tradeoffs; that policy decisions, any policy decision, will have unintended consequences.

Institutionalization was often cruel, and there were many abuses, but there’s a cost to letting dangerously mentally ill people roam freely in society. Perhaps we ought to start institutionalizing again, or perhaps hiring “resource officers” is lower than the cost of institutionalization. You have to pick your poison. A big problem I have with many gun control advocates is the idea that there’s no downsides to any policy choice, particularly gun control. The same could be said for hard-core libertarians who oppose institutionalization. There’s always tradeoffs. Gun control doesn’t necessarily make for a crime-free utopia, and deinstitutionalization could, over the long term, drive the population to supporting more gun control in response to crazy people getting guns and doing crazy things that make headlines.

Clayton Cramer notes:

I certainly will not claim the United Kingdom has more than twice the rape rate because American women are allowed to own guns while British women for practical purposes are not, but it does make you wonder, doesn’t it?

I think a woman’s ability to defend herself is part of it, but I also think different cultures tend to drive different kinds of criminality. British subjects, for instance, have never been big murderers, but overall violent crime is higher in the UK than here. I’ve also wondered if that is because, even in criminal subcultures, there’s certain behavior that’s likely to get your ass shot, and is best not engaged in, whereas in the UK there’s more low level violence, because the criminal culture is less willing to murder. I don’t think this has as much to do with the supply of guns, since guns seem to be pretty available to criminals in both countries, so much as differences in the criminal cultures.

Dave Hardy points to a study that shows why Illinois gun owners probably don’t have much faith that the state will actually protect them – well, a study that isn’t simply a matter of publishing the skyrocketing Chicago murder rate.

An analysis of five decades of news reports reveals that since 1960, at least 300 Chicago Police officers have been convicted of serious crimes, such as drug dealing, beatings of civilians, destroying evidence, protecting mobsters, theft and murder.

Moreover, the listing of police convicted of crimes undoubtedly underestimates the problem of corruption in the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The list does not include undetected and unreported illegal activity, serious misconduct resulting in internal disciplinary action, and officers who retire rather than face charges.

A good analysis that would seem to indicate they are, and that they do not actually cluster.

A shooter set a fire in upstate New York to lure first responders into a trap. You know, there are folks out there who say there’s no copycat effect, but the loons sure do seem to come out of the woodwork one right after another.

Glenn Reynolds thinks it’s a copycat too, and recommends a book on the copycat effect.