Right Wing Nation

I hate to say this, because I’m going to come off like a traitor, but I strongly suspect that crime rates have more to do — directly, that is — with the metropolitan/non-metropolitan population ratio than they do gun laws.

Look at the crime rates for states broken down into metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. The difference is striking. That should come as no surprise.

Guns surely come into play somewhere, but I don’t know that gun laws per se are much of a variable. Look at Philadelphia, then look at Pennsylvania’s gun laws — better, look at Philadelphia, then look at Centre County. Same state, completely different galaxy. My point is that no matter what the gun laws may be, people in the suburbs and country are far more likely to be armed than people in the city (criminals excluded, of course), and they are far more likely to take responsibility for their own lives and neighborhoods.

How people react to crime primarily has to do with dependence. In the suburbs, small towns, and the country, people are not dependent, and when faced with crime, take a proactive role. Dependent people take a wholly reactive role, and do nothing much but hold candlelight vigils and memorials and wave giant puppet heads and have Al Sharpton down so they can riot. Dependent people are also far less likely to own firearms for protection, because protecting oneself is an independent action, not a dependent one.

There is an article in the Atlantic about how crime follows Section 8 housing. There is the usual amount of idiotic, guilty liberal hand-wringing in the article, but what’s controversial about this? It isn’t race. It’s culture. These are people who are content to live with crime, who hate the police more than they hate the criminals, who whine constantly about how awful it is that the criminals who murder their children and parents are in prison, and who blame crime on everything but the criminal. Why wouldn’t it follow them?

Crime rates are more a cultural than a legislative phenomenon. The legislation — here, gun laws — reflects the degree of dependence of the state as a whole (or whoever holds the power in the state legislature).

I’m not saying that the likelihood of being armed doesn’t affect crime rates. It’s basic common sense that it does. But even in a gun-friendly state like Pennsylvania, the areas with the highest degree of dependence are the areas of the highest crime, and vice versa. And even in a gun-friendly state like Pennsylvania with relatively few gun control laws, those high dependence areas spawn extremely high crime rates. After all, even if a lack of gun control were capable of reducing crime, people would have to take advantage of the laws for them to have an effect.

Crime has nothing to do with poverty. There are people just as poor in the country, and they don’t mug other people; likewise, no thug running around with $5,000 in his pocket is, in any way, poor.

Why, then, does the poor person in Mifflin County not resort to stealing from others, but the not at all poor person in Philadelphia is a career criminal?

Culture.

Our poor person in Mifflin County — we’ll call him John — doesn’t mug people or break into houses and steal or sell drugs because doing any of those things would be socially unacepptable. The Philadelphia career criminal with $5000 in his pocket — we’ll call him Hector — is a career criminal because it’s socially acceptable. And because it is socially acceptable, he knows nobody in his community is going to do anything to keep him from mugging, stealing, raping, selling drugs, or murdering.

And in fact, they don’t. They spend all their time blaming everybody but Hector for the crimes he commits. It’s slavery, or the police, or white people, or racism, or Republicans, or not enough welfare checks, or guns, but it’s never Hector — and if Hector is ever convicted and thrown in prison where he belongs, Hector’s being in prison is suddenly a tragedy, and not the fact that he murdered 25 people. That diversion of responsibility away from Hector is what makes his crime socially acceptable, no matter how much people may whine about the crime, and no matter how many of their own children are murdered.

Those who divert crime away from the criminal enable the crime.

They also encourage Hector to commit crimes because they are dependent. They don’t see policing their own community as their job; they want somebody else to do it. So they wave those giant puppet heads and have million man marches and hold candlelight vigils against guns and sometimes riot, none of which has any power to affect the crime. They want more gun control precisely because they don’t want anybody doing anything about the crime. Defending oneself against a criminal or policing the community would violate the culture of dependence.

It would also cast the spotlight on Hector. So diversion of responsibility and the culture of dependence are the ingredients of the poison cocktail.

This is why even though I applaud the Heller decision, I predict that it will have absolutely no effect on crime in DC. Only a tiny handful of people will arm themselves against crime and take responsibility for their own lives and neighborhoods (provided that they can, given DC’s attempts to re-legislate the ban), by no means enough to affect crime. They’re too busy complaining about the evil police or how they’re not getting enough welfare or how “The Man” is keeping them down to grow up and be adults.

If they were adults and criminals were murdering their children and assaulting them on the streets, they wouldn’t be whining about the police; they’d be doing everything they could to help the police. They’d be too busy cleaning up their own neighborhoods and demanding that criminals be locked up in prison to whine about Bush or guns or most offensive of all, how awful it is that so many of “their boys” are in prison. But they aren’t adults. They’re children. And as long as they remain children, I can’t be bothered to lose any sleep over the crime they encourage in their own neighborhoods.

Crime is for society, a cultural problem. For the individual, crime is a moral problem. Poverty, racism, not enough welfare, Republicans, race, none of these causes crime. Only a lack of morals causes crime.

The Heller decision was good for the nation. It won’t do a damned thing for DC. And that’s my cynical 2 cents for the day.