Posted by I had started writing this piece weeks ago; originally inspired by a BBC report that Chicago was more dangerous than a warzone (more on this below) but stopped halfway because it required a lot of time to dig up data. Initially, the idea behind this piece was to deconstruct how the media uses data in an extremely misleading way. It is de rigueur to talk about fake news these days; pundits like to say that we denigrate our “fourth estate” at our own peril. My reply is that it doesn’t have to be fake to be biased; it just requires a selective use of facts and figures. The media does do this to a huge degree which I also don’t have a problem with; just be honest up front about your bias rather than continually trying to say you are impartial.
I resurrected this post because a friend posted an ABC News article yesterday about Trump’s pledge to send in the feds to Chicago if they couldn’t get the violence under control; shades of The Untouchables with Eliot Ness and Al Capone. This reminds me of a comment I once made that I am a fan of the triads in Hong Kong. When challenged about this strange view, my answer was, “since we can’t eliminate crime, I prefer my crime to be organised”. In other words, organised crime usually doesn’t affect the average man who stays away from it and has rules that everyone plays by. Unorganised crime, like we see in Chicago today, sees random shootings and gang warfare where innocents (including children) are often caught in the crossfire. My apologies; once again, my ADD has caused me to digress.
This article starts with talk about the inaccuracy of Trump’s numbers as ABC’s sourcing from the Chicago Police Department give slightly different figures. Here is the bias I was talking about earlier. I said I stopped writing this missive because of the time required in gathering data. In fact, there are numerous numbers from different “official” sources about the number of homicides in different American cities and the numbers are not the same. I finally gave up with the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if the numbers are absolutely correct; regardless of what data you use, the premise, trend, and conclusion are the same which is the main point. That’s why ABC’s petulant reporting that starts with an attack on Trump’s numbers is a problem; it doesn’t really refute the point, it is just a personal attack against Trump whose own shoot from the hip tweeting and blasé attitude towards fact checking is one of his big weaknesses. One of the most effective tools in debate is to denigrate your opponent rather than trying to prove your own point (the ad hominem attacks that have become so popular and prevalent on social media). Trump does this with great exaggeration and success; I do not expect nor want my media to do the same.
Everyone knows America is a violent place, at least compared to most other developed countries. Most liberals in Canada and Europe attribute this to a culture of violence and guns and pontificate about “what’s wrong with Americans”. Conversely, the Japanese, Korean and Chinese (including Hong Kong), have murder rates below 1/100,000, which puts even most Europeans to shame, acknowledge the fact that America is violent but, unlike the Europeans, wisely shut up because it’s none of their business.
Currently, Chicago is seen as the the epicenter of the recent rise in gun violence and the media is playing this up by cherry picking statistics like this report from the Washington Post on New Year’s day about 2016.
One of the most violent years in Chicago history ended with a sobering tally: 762 homicides, the most in two decades in the city and more than New York and Los Angeles combined.
On the surface, this is a substantial increase from the 468 in 2015 and 416 in 2014. But there is a reason they issue the caveat, the most in more than two decades, is because between 1990-95, there was well over 800 homicides each year in Chicago which is higher than it is today despite a smaller population back then. It is also doesn’t tell you the whole story which is that homicide rates in New York and Los Angeles have been pretty flat. In NYC, there were 334 murders in 2016 versus 352 in 2015 which is close to the record low 333 in 2014. Contrast that to the peak of 2,245 murders in NYC in 1989. L.A. City (as opposed to L.A. County) saw 294 murders in 2016 versus 296 in 2015. One thing for sure is that murder rates (and violent crime in general) in the USA spiked and peaked by the 1980s and early 1990s and then mysteriously started to fall rapidly in the mid-90s. Many explanations have been offered for this phenomenon including the abortion theory by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in “Freakonomics” and the broken windows theory by Malcolm Gladwell in “The Tipping Point”. The debate on the cause of this still rages which leads us to the conclusion that if we don’t really understand what caused violent crime across the US to fall in the first place back in the 90s (where we have had years of data and research into the phenomenon), what chance do we have of understanding what is causing violent crime to rise again in Chicago today. If we don’t understand why it is happening then how do we solve the problem? It’s like have a pain in your chest but not knowing what’s causing it so you randomly take drugs hoping one will work. Despite a lot of studies being done into the Chicago problem recently, there still is no conclusive answer as to what the underlying cause of the rise in murders is.
The simple truth is that violent crime in America has been on downtrend for more than two decades and the upturn in the past two years is not across the board. According to the FBI’s 2016 report, the rise in murders is owing to a handful of major cities, notably Chicago but also Memphis, San Antonio, Louisville, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. Together, these six cities accounted for 76% of the increase in big city homicides in 2016. A year earlier in 2015, it was Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and Milwaukee. Only Chicago has stayed on the list and most of the victims were young African-American males and guns were used in nearly 3/4 of the cases. So far, it appears it is primarily a Chicago specific problem, not a nation-wide one although it is too early to completely tell for sure.
Thus, it is not surprising that the press is focused on Chicago because it is the poster-boy for the surge in violent crime in America and because it is the third largest city in the country. In Chicago, the bulk of the deaths and shooting incidents, which jumped from 2,426 in 2015 to 3,550 last year, occurred in only five neighborhoods (Austin, Englewood, New City, West Englewood and West Garfield Park) all poor and predominantly black areas where gangs are most active.
The BBC report and video are an interesting human interest story and an exposé on the murder problem in Chicago. My biggest beef with it is this infographic that is also repeated in several other mainstream publication using the headline grabbing title of “Chicago, worse than a war zone.”
On the surface, the numbers are reasonably correct. There have been more murders in Chicago since 2001 than there were Americans killed in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Thus we get the theme of Chicago is worse than a war zone. It couldn’t be anywhere further than the truth. A casual look into this ignores the fact that there are a lot more Americans in Chicago than there are Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq (especially after the troop pull out).
Between 2001 and 2014, the death rate for U.S. military personnel in [Afghanistan] ranged between 250 and 600 soldiers per 100,000, according to data compiled from the Pentagon and an Associated Press report… Afghanistan, in particular, saw 6,637 military deaths and 3,545 violent civilian deaths in 2015, for an overall homicide rate of 33.3 per 100,000 people, according to data published by the US military. That’s not including deaths inside Taliban-controlled territory, which are harder to track.
The worse part is that Chicago isn’t even the most dangerous city for homicides in the United States. CNN compiled this chart using FBI data:
This is not to say that there isn’t a problem in Chicago nor is it an attempt to ignore the fact that it may feel like a war zone to the residents of those five neighbourhoods that are particularly violent. Its an attempt to rationally look at the numbers and problem rather than the sensationalism that the media and President Trump are trying to stir up. Only by analysing the real problem and understanding it can we even hope to come up with an effective solution.
To liberals, the answer is always obvious. Racism (they are mostly black), poverty (associated with the former), and guns. To the conservatives, its poor policing and a culture of crime and drugs. Thus the solutions are always the same. The liberals want to spend more money on education, social welfare and slap on gun control. The conservatives want more cops, zero tolerance policing (à la former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani), and for the more progressive ones, job creation. Both sides are idiots. Why can’t it be a combination of all the above? But I want to discuss the issue of gun control a bit more.
The Fort Lauderdale airport shooting on 6 January 2017 that left five people dead and six wounded will undoubtedly, at least for a short period of time, reopen debate about guns in America. It seems to happen after every mass shooting and just as quickly, it gets relegated to the increasingly long list of similar historical events. This particular event hit a little bit close to me as I actually flew into that airport and terminal twice this last year. It brought back memories of New York for me. My first visit to the Big Apple was when I was a student in Montréal in 1993. We wanted to get cheap tickets for Broadway and in those days, you bought them in the basement of the World Trade Centre. We took the subway and then found ourselves in Brooklyn as the train had been diverted due to the first WTC bombing which was a van filled with explosives in the underground parking lot of the WTC. We didn’t get to see a Broadway show that trip. Fast forward eight years to 2001 and I was supposed to be in New York on business during 9/11. Nomura’s offices were across the street from the WTC in the World Finance Centre. But my second daughter was born a few days earlier so I cancelled my trip to be at home with my family and I watched the events unfold on the TV instead. My personal brush with terrorism and 9/11 was documented by the South China Morning Post in this article.
As I watched the Ft. Lauderdale event live, I was flabbergasted that they even suggested that the shooter was Canadian and had flown into the airport from Canada (the shooting did take place in the terminal that Air Canada flies into). Seriously? How does that even make the slightest sense whatsoever? Who smuggles guns INTO America from Canada?
This is where one of my limousine liberal tendencies comes out. I actually believe in gun control. I also believe in the right to own guns. The two are, in reality, not mutually exclusive. Of course guns don’t kill people, maliciousness and stupidity do (there are quite a few accidental gun deaths in the US as well as “crimes of passion” where heated arguments result in one party being shot). But guns, by definition, allow you to kill more efficiently. It is hard to go on a rampage and knife 50 people to death. Sure there are gun-related mass murders in Europe and Canada. The 2011 mass murder of 77 people in Norway by Anders Breivik and the École Polytechnique massacre of 14 women in Montréal in 1989 by Marc Lépine come to mind. But the rate of murder and the use of guns in America far exceed those in the rest of the developed world.
America is unique in being the only country in the world that has more guns than people at 112.6 per 100 population. Canada has 30.8 which puts it right in the same range as most European countries like Germany and France. I don’t see how extended background checks, licensing and restricted use can logically been seen as a violation of your human rights. We need licensing and registration for car ownership and driving, why is it so difficult to accept the same for firearms? I’m not saying you can’t (or shouldn’t) own a gun for hunting, target shooting, or even for personal and home protection. I’m all for responsible gun ownership but I’m also for reasonable rules aimed at limited and hindering irresponsible gun ownership.
Chicago already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the United States and that hasn’t helped as proponents of unrestricted gun ownership like to point out. The problem is that, according the the City of Chicago, almost 60% of firearms recovered at Chicago crime scenes were bought in states that do not require background checks for internet or gun show sales like neighboring Indiana and Wisconsin. Of the remaining crime guns, nearly half were purchased at three gun shops just outside the city. Maybe gun control works in Canada because people have to cross a border and thus despite the ease of obtaining a gun in neighbouring America; it doesn’t translate into as big a surge in crime-related guns being smuggled across the border. Although there are some troubling trends being imported across the border:
At its heart, American exceptionalism on the issue of gun ownership owes itself primarily to the Second Amendment. What is striking, and surprising, is how many Americans I have met who don’t know what it actually says. What most Americans and the National Rifle Association like to point out is that all Americans have the constitutional right to bear arms. Here is the Second Amendment in its entirety:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Somehow, the first bit tends to get dropped off in most quotations. And the courts and constitutional lawyers have been debating the intent of this preface sentence since it was adopted until today. To a casual outside observer though, the intent of this is clear. After the American War of Independence (1775-1783) ended the United States disbanded most of the Continental Army because the government was basically bankrupt (with large debts to France and the Netherlands) and couldn’t afford to maintain a large standing army. Of course, if the evil redcoats were to return, you would need to have a prepared and armed militia that you could raise rather quickly to fend them off hence the Second Amendment in 1791. It is only slightly ironic that the next war with the British would be a war of aggression with the United States declaring war in 1812 with the hope of conquering Canada and fulfilling President Madison’s belief in Manifest Destiny. That was one of the most futile wars ever with the Americans burning York (now known as Toronto), and the British expeditionary forces burning Washington D.C. only to end with the border in basically the same place that it started.
Today, the Second Amendment right to bear arms is unquestioned in America and even though the Supreme Court has ruled that, “The right belongs to individuals [but] that the right is not unlimited and does not prohibit all regulation of either firearms or similar devices.” So there is no debate, even in America, that this is an absolute right, just where to draw the line. Taken to its extreme, no restrictions means you have the right to own a nuclear bomb or chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, It seems that most of the first sentence of the Second Amendment is completely ignored even though it seems clear that the intent was so the infant United States, with a very weak and small standing army, could raise a militia army quickly to defend itself against the British. Mental gymnastics saying that the intent of the phrase “security of a free state” includes the security against government tyranny as per the Oath of Allegiance which states, “I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic” is a huge leap of logic. Nonetheless, the debate in America rages on and will not be resolved anytime soon regardless of what the rest of the world thinks is an insane example of American exceptionalism.