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It seem to follow that drugs play a large role in violence. Guns are not the cause of violence in Chicago, or St Louis, or Baltimore. It's drugs and all of the various activity that goes along with drug dealers and users.
If you love the Godfather trilogy like I do you might remember the scene where the heads of the five families get together to end the turf war and they discuss selling drugs. Even the mob was against selling drugs because they didn't want it around children.
But this new breed of organized crime doesn't seem to have such concern. The government fought organized crime in the 50s and somewhat put an end to the "Mafia." But it seems like they have given up on fighting organized crime.
Drugs of all kinds flow through the border and into these areas where they claim it's guns causing violence. They have very strict gun laws in Chicago but what are the drug laws? We hear the number of people shot in Chicago but we never hear why they are shot.
I would be willing to bet 9 out of 10 shootings has to do with drugs? The 2 most violent city in the world are Tijuana and Acapulco. In 2018 2,640 people were killed in Tijuana. Is it because of easy access to guns or because of the illicit drug trade?
Most of the non-drug trade mass killings involve mental illness. In 1994 Congress passed an "assault weapons ban," under the guise of "public safety." Several studies showed that it did nothing to decrease crime.
The ban was initiated after several high profile mass shootings. The first was a shooting involving school children, mostly immigrants from Southeast Asia. The lone gunman was Patrick Purdy, a mentally disturbed drifter from a broken home. His father happened to be in the Army.
He made a threatening call to the school ahead of time and nothing was done in response. He light his car loaded with fireworks on fire to cause a distraction. After the shooting, he shot himself.
He had carved "Hezbollah" into his rife and wrote "PLO," "Libya," and "death to the great Satan" on his jacket. You can read more about him here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland…
The next shooting they cited for the purpose of the ban was the Luby's shooting in Texas. The killer in this incident was 35-year-old George Hennard, an unemployed former merchant Marine. He drove his truck through the window of the restaurant and yelled....
"All women of Killeen and Belton are vipers! This is what you've done to me and my family! This is what Bell County did to me... this is payback day!" He was described as having an explosive temper and had a hate for women and minorities. He also killed himself.
He was previously kicked out of the merchant Marines possession of marijuana. Read more about him here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby%27s_…. A twist to this story is, there was a woman there by the name of Suzanna Hupp. She usually carried a gun but left it on her car that day.
She said she had feared if she got caught carrying she might lose her chiropractor's license. The gun was 100 feet away but she could not get to it.
The most disturbing case the anti-gun advocates used was the McDonald's shooting in San Ysidro California. The killer in this case was 41-year-old James Huberty. "On July 15, 1984, James Huberty commented to his wife, Etna, that he suspected he might have a mental problem."
2 days later he sought help by calling a mental clinic to request an appointment. He was told he would be called back within hours. He waited by the phone all day and no one ever called him back. A day later he drove to the McDonald's 200 yards from where he lived and shot 21
people and wounded 19 more. The Police finally shot and killed him after 77 minutes. Hubberty made remarks about having served in Vietnam, although he was never in the military. Read more about him here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidr…
So, as you see in most every case of mass murder outside of drug gang territory there is some sort of mental illness and/ or drug use involved. Meanwhile crime as a whole did not drop due to the "assault weapons ban" and mass shootings did not see a significant decline.
Mass shootings account for less than 0.02% of all murders and of the cases in which they used to pass the "assault weapons ban" in 1994, all of the perps had some type of mental illness, diagnosed or otherwise. So do we really have a gun problem?
Or do we have a drugs and mental illness problem disguised as a gun problem?
Another thing I was thinking about that I forgot to add is the general desire for people willing to try anything and everything to escape the existential "pain" of reality. When I was young I built car models for fun.
My parents gave me money when they could to buy a model, spray paint, glue, and bottles of paint. I would stay up all night until I was done with it. I would sometimes take them back apart and customize them. Never once did I think about using any of the things to get high.
But here I am now almost 40 years older and I have to show an ID to buy spray paint, glue, or even canned air. Why are these things that I bought as a child now heavily guarded behind locked glass and metal cages?
Is there such an epidemic of people using everyday items to alter their reality? If so what does that say about the state of mental health in this country?
