“The problem is not our gun laws. Nor is it our drug laws, or racist cops, prosecutors and judges. The problem is black criminality, which is a function of black pathology, which ultimately stems from the breakdown of the black family.”
POLITICAL DIARY
Chicago and Black Criminality
By JASON L. RILEY
July 8, 2014 5:01 p.m. ET
Apparently, no one told Chicago that the Fourth of July holiday weekend was over. The shootings continued into Monday.
“In the roughly 84 hours from 3:10 p.m. Thursday until 3:30 a.m. Monday, gunfire struck 82 people, 14 of them fatally,” reports the Chicago Tribune. “Both tallies include two boys shot by police: a 14-year-old who allegedly pointed a long-barreled .44-caliber revolver at officers, and a 16-year-old who—after first eluding cops who had responded to a report of shots fired—allegedly refused officers’ instructions to drop a .380-caliber semi-automatic handgun as he crawled out from beneath a car. That’s right, a 14-year-old wielding a .44-caliber revolver and a 16-year-old with a semi-automatic handgun.”
So here we go again. Another spate of shootings that feature, almost exclusively, young black and brown men. Another liberal clarion call for more gun control. And another collective dodge of the real problem, which is ghetto culture. If recent history is any indication, this debate on the left will be largely fact-free. So let’s throw some facts out there.Many places with less-restrictive gun laws have less gun violence than Chicago, which already sports some of the toughest gun restrictions in the country. The gun-ownership rate in rural areas is higher than in urban areas—a Gallup poll last year found that rural Americans are more than twice as likely to have a gun in the home than those living in large cities—yet urban areas have more gun violence. And finally, the gun ownership rate among whites is significantly higher than among blacks, yet gun violence among blacks is much more common. In 2010, blacks, who make up just 13 percent of the population, were 55 percent of shooting homicide victims. And 90 percent of black murder victims are killed by other blacks.
The problem is not our gun laws. Nor is it our drug laws, or racist cops, prosecutors and judges. The problem is black criminality, which is a function of black pathology, which ultimately stems from the breakdown of the black family.
The late James Q. Wilson put it this way:
“If crime is to a significant degree caused by weak character; if weak character is more likely among the children of unmarried mothers; if there are no fathers who will help raise their children, acquire jobs, and protect their neighborhoods; if boys become young men with no preparation for work; if school achievement is regarded as a sign of having “sold out” to a dominant white culture; if powerful gangs replace weak families—if all these things are true, then the chances of reducing by plan and in the near future the crime rate of low-income blacks are slim.”
Wilson wrote that in 2002, but it was true 20 years before then and may still be true 20 years from now if we don’t confront the problem head-on. And it’s awfully difficult to confront something that most people, especially on the political left, don’t even want to talk about.