Hello! You don't have a right to "feel safe". You have a right to "protect yourself"!

The Equality Argument For Gun Control Jacob Schuman:

The fact is, the widespread availability of guns is a significant, but often overlooked, cause of persistent inequality in the United States. Focusing on the relationship between guns and inequality will allow gun control advocates to argue that restricting firearm access is an essential step towards achieving social justice and economic empowerment.

Jacob, where in the Constitution of the United States do you find "the right to feel safe"?

That seems to be what you are arguing for.

The Second Amendment acknowledges your God given right to protect yourself, your family, your home, your property.   What else are you asking for?

The first way that guns drive inequality is by making life more violent and less stable for people living in economically disadvantaged communities. Crime rates, especially violent crime rates, are higher in poorer neighborhoods. While this is true across the world, and is likely to remain so, open access to firearms in the United States makes these crimes easier to commit, more lethal, and more destructive of community life.

"Economically disadvantaged communities" are poor neighborhoods.  Single-parent households, no "father figure" present, mothers raising children and trying to earn a living (or dependent on "aid to dependent children" income, which financially awards unwed mothers).

These aren't indicators of inequality; these are indicators of a societal factor which accepts governmental dependency.   It has NOTHING to do with the presence of firearms, except that young men in these dependent conditions are faced with no job alternatives other than crime; they see the people driving big cars, and they are the people with guns.

Because poor people cannot afford guns; they need to eat.



Some folks break out of that cycle of violence.  They are those whose mothers are strong and require their children to get good grades in school and get good jobs because they have EARNED those jobs.

The sick, lame and lazy just proliferate the cycle of living on the dole.   And in their lassitude, they spend their rent money on an illegal gun and go rob a liquor store.

That, or they get into a gang fight where they kill their neighbor, or their neighbor kills them.

Jacob, we see these "pie in the sky" arguments EVERY day, and they are so shallow that we think less of the whiners and the snivelers who use phrases like "economically disadvanted".  Do you believe that you are making an argument for gun control?  

You are not.  You're making an argument for non-productive lives.  Who needs to feel guilty for people who make the conscious choice NOT to make their own lives better?

Most people think of violent crime as the result of poverty, but in fact it is also a cause. Over the July 4th weekend this year, for instance, 82 people were shot in Chicago,most of them in the city's struggling South Side, where crime rates are ten times higher than wealthier areas of the city. For residents of these neighborhoods, who are striving to make ends meet and improve their economic lot, the chaos and destruction wrought by gun violence is an enormous obstacle. And it is one that richer communities do not have to face.

"Richer communities do not have to face" the factors that you describe, because they can live well without having to work for a living, or because they have contacts who will help them find meaningful and financially rewarding jobs.

Poorer communities don't have that advantage.  They have to work twice as hard to get half as much, but the opportunities are there for even the poorest with hard work and a determination to better themselves.

The Federal Government (and state and local agencies) do make an effort to support working people, but they don't have the funding (96% of which is provided by those folks in "wealthier areas") to help people who don't make an effort to help themselves.  All they can do is provide minimal support to folks who are otherwise helpless, and hope that the small percent of people who are not willing to live their lives on the dole can make ends meet.


Let's be clear about this, Jacob.  Workers get what they earn; if they work harder, and smarter, they make more money.  They can afford more 'things' and made their own advantages.

Those that can't ... don't.  Sorry if that offends you, but that's what life is all about.  A lot of luck, but a lot more sweat and sacrifice to achieve the worth-while goal of financial independence from the government dole.

You are concerned about the murder rate in Chicago?  So am I, but I don't actually LIVE there so it's an intellectual exercise for me.  So no, I just pay my taxes and take care of myself, and I don't have the time or inclination to provide support who aren't willing to make the same effort I have made for over 50 years.

Don't you throw that "richer communities" canard in my face, Jacob.  And most of the people reading this are offended by your attempt to throw guilt in the face of hard-working people whose taxes have been supporting these "economically disadvantaged" people you're championing.

Given the racial aspect of socio-economic inequality in the United States, the negative impact of gun violence is borne especially by minority communities

The gang-bangers kill their own.  Folks who work hard don't have to live in the ghetto.  The successful people in the ghetto are the gang-bangers.  They don't leave the ghetto because that's where the money is ... they call them "nickle bags" and "dime bags".  And the gang-bangers protect their turf by murdering the competition. It's not exactly the American Dream, but it does support their economic pragmatism.

So when you make idiotic statements like the above, you're not contributing to a solution.  You're just whining because you think you can make intellectual points with your Liberal friends who will suck up your crappy logic as if it's the sermon on the mount.

People decide how to live their own lives.  

I'm not responsible for the decisions they make.  I'm not responsible for their socio-economic situation.  It's not my fault that their mother allowed some stranger to spend the night in her bed, and the next morning he was gone (and never seen again).   It's not my fault that she bore children which she could not support as a consequence of her bad choices ... or her loneliness.

Gun Violence is not a problem for me, Jacob.   I avoid dangerous neighborhoods .. because I don't live in them.

Your bleeding heart liberalism is laudable in the sense that you obviously really CARE about people who find themselves trapped in un-survivable conditions.  I GET that you write this article to generate a wider sense of community and to encourage support for these poor people who are trapped in the ghetto.

But it's not my problem.