While violent crime and homicides have fallen to record-low levels in many parts of the country, gun control activists are quick to remind us that we’re not crime-free… and claim that their anti-2A laws will help make us safer.
Of course, violent criminals aren’t going to bat an eye violating a possessory gun law when they’re willing to commit armed robberies, carjackings, and homicides. The most effective strategies at reducing violent crime don’t involve attacking our Second Amendment rights. Instead, they focus on the small group of prolific offenders and the tiny percentage of any given city where they operate. Whether its targeted deterrence by police or things like Operation Ceasefire that deal directly with those most at risk of committing and being the victims of violent crime, we know that if you want safer streets you have to address the people creating the problem.
Some folks believe that by addressing the “root causes” of violent crime we can reduce it as wel, and that’s where a new study from the University of Chicago comes in. According to researchers, increases in eviction rates correspond to an increase in shootings.
Violent crime has fallen to historic lows in Chicago, although gun violence continues to plague neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. A 2023 study of five major cities showed that more than 55% of shootings occurred in just 9% of total census tracts, and that small increases in things like poverty, unemployment, or limited access to health care are associated with large increases in firearm violence.
Yet not every neighborhood that struggles with these challenges also has high rates of violence. What is different about these communities? A key factor may be eviction rates. A new study from the University of Chicago looks at the link between evictions and gun violence across Chicago and found that every 1% increase in eviction rate in a census tract was associated with 2.66 more shootings.
The study also showed that evictions disrupt a neighborhood’s “collective efficacy,” or residents’ shared belief in their ability to work together for the common good. This sense of cohesion or neighborliness can protect disadvantaged neighborhoods from gun violence in spite of greater socioeconomic disadvantages.
“Evictions really break up communities, both for the people who are forced to move and for people who are losing their neighbors,” said Thomas Statchen, a medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and lead author of the study, published recently in JAMA Network Open. “Here we can see that eviction rates not only impact these social characteristics but are associated with increased gun violence as well.”
Now, based on this one would also expect that residents choosing to move out of the neighborhood would also disrupt the sense of community and looking out for each other (or “collective efficacy” in lefty-speak). The University of Chicago says more than 3,600,000 people were forcibly evicted from their housing between 2007 and 2016, but the number of people voluntarily uprooting themselves from their communities has to be much higher.
Maybe that’s not the case in low-income neighborhoods. I honestly have no idea. But if the Democrats want to pass laws that are aimed at lowering eviction rates instead of banning guns, I’m all for it.
Of course, that’s not how it works, is it? Sure, Democrats may use this study to call for increased government spending on mortgage or rental assistance, but they’ll keep demanding bans on AR-15s and large capacity magazines, “gun-free zones”, and other possessory offenses that can also disrupt a neighborhood’s “collective efficacy” by putting people in prison for violating those laws.
I’d be very curious to see what might happen if a red state legislators looking to do an experiment aimed at reducing crime tried to put this study to the test. It would be easy enough to set up a pilot program in a couple of specific high-crime neighborhoods with an eye towards keeping or creating a community where people watch out for each other and monitoring what happens to the crime rate. If the real world test proves the study is correct, great! If not, we haven’t wasted a ton of money on a national or even statewide program, and we can move on to other ideas aimed at improving public safety without sacrificing our Second Amendment rights.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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