A 27-year-old man was killed and 24 other people were shot after gunfire erupted early Sunday morning in Akron, Ohio, during what a police official said was a big birthday party.
Officers responded to 911 calls shortly after midnight, reporting shots fired and multiple victims struck in the area of Kelly Ave. and 8th Ave., according to a statement from the city’s mayor and police chief.
The shooting took place during a “large birthday party” that earlier in the night had more than 200 people in attendance, Akron Police Chief Brian Harding said in a Sunday evening news conference.
In the shooting’s aftermath, authorities found the scene “littered” with spent shell casings that stretched down a whole block, the police chief said.
I know that people hate hearing it, but the violence–specifically gun violence–is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
This was likely gang activity. Gang activity is driven by a lot of socioeconomic factors; long-term fixes are things like community reinvestment, properly funded education, reducing income inequality, criminal justice reform, and so on. Even things like reproductive rights and access to birth control and abortion help rather significantly here. If you fix the underlying issues that drive gang activity in the first place, then you eliminate most of the violence problem without also affecting civil rights.
Unfortunately, in the US, one side appears to only have the political will to remove a particular civil right, and the other side wants to obstruct everything and blame it on all “personal responsibility”.
I know that people hate hearing it, but the violence–specifically gun violence–is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
This was likely gang activity.
I’m not sure that makes sense, you’re arguing that gangs, not guns are the problem when every country has gangs but not every country has guns so readily available.
I’m not sure that makes sense
The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental civil right in the US, and I believe that access to the means of self-protection is a human right. I think that correcting the underlying issues that lead to gang activity would have more benefits overall than trying to ban a constitutional right.
While gang activity exists in all countries, countries with fewer social problems and lower economic inequality have far less of a problem with gang activity.
Couldn’t owning more guns contribute to threats in life at a greater rate then they protect individuals?
Let me ask you this - do you believe that people have the right to protect their own lives? Does that right depend on your size and gender?
Yes they do have a right to protect themselves.
Let me ask you, do humans have an accurate ability to perceive threats and predict actions of other people
I would also like if you could answer the first question I asked if you have the time.
Yes they do have a right to protect themselves.
Okay, so how does a 4’10" 95# person protect themselves from someone like me, at 6’2", 240#, weightlifter, with experience in TKD, judo, and longsword fencing? (Oh, and stun guns mostly just tickle; I’ve tried one on myself.) Do they only have the right to self defense if they’re small?
do humans have an accurate ability to perceive threats and predict actions of other people
Most people can make pretty reasonable predictions about when a situation is becoming threatening, yes. Just ask any woman that’s walked home alone in a city after dark.
Drop the bullshit. You’re using short people and lone women as human shields for your hobby.
Are we really supposed to believe your dogshit gun laws are an act of feminism? You’ve put 100% of American women in more danger by arming criminals, rapists and domestic abusers and you want to claim it’s all worth it because the less than 20% of women who want to carry guns are possibly safer.
Which of course they’re not anyway. The moment they know a man is a “brandish your gun” level threat is when that man grabs them or pulls a weapon on them.
And you know what happens next don’t you Mr Action Hero? If the man is already in grappling distance, she gets disarmed and then probably killed with her own weapon. If the man has already pulled his gun, she gets shot before she can aim and fire her gun.
The best thing women can do to keep themselves safe is to avoid men who are walking red flags, like gun-owners that throw women under the bus for their own self-interest and awkwardly brag about martial arts training and being immune to stun guns.
Sounds gang-related. Gun control alone isn’t going to solve this, unfortunately, it’s a socioeconomic problem.
So what you’re saying is the killers are poor, so high taxes on bullets could have prevented this.
You think drug dealers in some of the largest criminal gangs around are poor? What, you checking their tax records? They don’t report black market cocaine sales to the IRS and even if they did the money would have to be laundered. Guarantee at least half those dudes are richer than me with my menial “not crack selling” job.
Furthermore, “self defense only for rich whities who can afford the tax” isn’t the win you seem to think it is.
Drug dealing has a pretty extreme income distribution. Half of them earn less than minimum wage, only a couple of guys at the top actually make good money.
Half of em are doing it wrong then, I was nowhere near “the top” and I was making more than I do now legally. You just mean highschool dealers, or are we talking like, actual drug dealers that aren’t just smoking for free because the allowance mommy gives them doesn’t cover their need for weed?
Most of the street-level dealers that I saw in Chicago were not making a lot. I can’t guarantee that they weren’t dipping into their own supply, but they still lived in the same shitty, working-class neighborhood, and they were renting rather than owning. I’m sure someone was making a fair amount of money, but they guys on the corners, or the guys that fetched the drugs for the transaction, they weren’t making bank. AFAIK, they were mostly dealing pot and heroin; probably mostly heroin, based on the baggie sizes.
Well you have to live where the customers are and where the neighbors don’t ask questions, depending on what you sell and how much will of course vary that. Still, drug dealers have enough money that “tax bullets” isn’t going to stop them.
You might have to live near your customers, but you don’t have to live in exactly the same shitty circumstances. Based on the places they lived, they weren’t doing a lot better than the people around them that were working shitty minimum wage jobs.
