[Until I started
observing gangs and criminals, I used to think that young, violent criminals
were generally adept in gun use. I learned the reality was far worse. Gangs and
drug crews had caches of high-powered weapons but no formal training. Their
members could not match a gun to its proper bullet. Few knew how to load, clean
or shoot. Their aim was woeful: they injured one another — not to mention
bystanders — as often as their enemies. It would be ludicrous to train gang
members to shoot better (even if it would reduce the number of innocent bystanders
who get shot, it would empower criminals). So big-city mayors, and their police
departments, understandably focus on gun access.]
By Sudhir Venkatesh
 |
| Picture credit: Blog Critics |
CHICAGO hit a grim milestone last week, when it recorded its
400th murder for the year. Homicides are up about 25 percent
over last year. Chicago has surpassed New York and Los Angeles as a hub of
gun-related violence, most of it involving young people. Since 2001, it has
recorded more than 5,000
gun-related deaths, compared with the 2,000 American military deaths in the war
in Afghanistan.
I’ve been studying
violent crime for more than a decade — first as an academic researcher, then
briefly as a senior adviser to the F.B.I. — and have been struck by the ways in
which our efforts to stop gun violence are not as targeted and efficient as
they should be.
Until I started
observing gangs and criminals, I used to think that young, violent criminals
were generally adept in gun use. I learned the reality was far worse. Gangs and
drug crews had caches of high-powered weapons but no formal training. Their
members could not match a gun to its proper bullet. Few knew how to load, clean
or shoot. Their aim was woeful: they injured one another — not to mention
bystanders — as often as their enemies. It would be ludicrous to train gang
members to shoot better (even if it would reduce the number of innocent bystanders
who get shot, it would empower criminals). So big-city mayors, and their police
departments, understandably focus on gun access.
But they have done so in
an unbalanced way. Gun runners who transport weapons from federally licensed
dealers to city neighborhoods have been singled out as a primary culprit. But
purchases from authorized dealers account for only about 60 percent of gun purchases,
and the gun runners — so-called straw purchasers — are responsible for only a
fraction of these. We can no longer ignore the 40 percent of guns obtained on
the secondary market, which includes gun brokers, gangs and other informal
traders.
For inner-city young
men, a gun is a badge of honor and an act of masculine one-upmanship. Rarely do
they have access to straw purchasers — most couldn’t even name one. They do,
however, know a gang or a clandestine seller around the corner from whom they
can buy, borrow or rent a gun.
Stopping the intra- and
interstate transport of guns by straw purchasers can net great sums of money,
not to mention public acclaim. But more significant gains have been made by
targeting the secondary market, through amnesty programs in which guns may be
turned in by the public, no questions asked. In June, for example, 5,500 guns
(including some replicas and BB guns) were turned in to the Chicago police as
part of its annual gun
“buyback” program. The incentive? A $100 gift card for each real
gun. (Chicago’s crime rate did not drop significantly as a result, but that is
not the point of buybacks, which signal to communities that the police are
interested in nonpunitive ways to get guns off the street.)
A second problem with
current policy is the lack of support for mediation programs. In Boston, the
interfaith Ten Point
Coalition, co-founded by the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers with police
support, helped reset relations between the community and law enforcement. Then
the criminologist David M. Kennedy brought in his Ceasefire
program, which brings street-based mediators and cops into
productive discussions with gang members and would-be criminals. Gang violence
sharply declined through both efforts, and Mr. Kennedy’s experiment has been
successfully replicated in other cities.
But many police chiefs
have been reluctant to embrace such efforts. They fear that mediators will
usurp their authority and become vigilante citizen patrols. Charities are
reluctant to support mediation efforts because of a mistaken view that
philanthropy should not get into bed with law enforcement. The fact that
criminal justice programs receive less than 1 percent of total philanthropic
giving should alarm us.
A third mistake: not
understanding how guns change hands. A Justice Department study found in 2001
that 40 percent of
all criminals acquired their guns on the street, but another 40 percent
obtained their guns from friends or family members. Why not wage a
national campaign around the familial dynamics that perpetuate liberal gun
exchange?
We are unlikely to
eliminate guns from the home, but at least we could get out this message,
through social media and clever advertising, that just as friends don’t let
friends drive drunk, they shouldn’t lend or give weapons away. Acknowledging
that many illegal guns will remain on the streets, while recruiting friends and
relatives to at least make sure those guns are kept away from untrained and
emotionally volatile kids, would be a sensible step.
Good gun policy is good
social policy. A study by
researchers at the University of Chicago found that one-fifth of youths killed
by gunfire there were innocent bystanders. The economist Steven J. Levitt has
estimated that each homicide is associated with out-migration of 70 city
residents. The total social costs of gun violence in Chicago have
been estimated at about $2.5 billon — $2,500 per household — a year.
I’m sure that Chicago’s
mayor, Rahm Emanuel, could find better ways to spend that money. Gun buybacks,
mediation programs and media campaigns aimed at gun owners and their families
should be among them.
Sudhir Venkatesh,
a professor of sociology at Columbia, is the author, most recently, of “Gang
Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets.”
CHINA JAILS 4 TIBETANS LINKED TO SELF-IMMOLATION PROTESTS
[The youngest of those jailed, Lobsang Jangchub, 17, was charged with helping a fellow monk named Gepe set himself on fire in March and handed an eight-year sentence. Another monk from the same monastery, Lobsang Tsultrim, 19, was given 11 years for his role in Gepe’s self-immolation, Radio Free Asia said.]
By Andrew Jacobs
The sentences, from 7 to 11 years, reflect Beijing’s
hard-line approach to a protest campaign that has so far proved difficult to
tame.
Two of the four Tibetan men were charged with leaking news
of the protests to “outside contacts,” and the other two were accused of
helping a fellow monk burn himself to death at Kirti Monastery, a hotbed of
anti-Chinese resistance in Sichuan Province. All of the men were incommunicado
for several months; the news that they had been tried and convicted was relayed
to Radio Free Asia through two exiled Tibetan monks with contacts in the
region.
“Two days before their trial, their family members were
sent a notice by the court that the trial was about to begin, but they were not
allowed to hire a lawyer for their defense,” Radio Free Asia quoted the two
monks as saying. “Afterward, they were given only a few minutes to meet with
their family.” The four men were tried in September, said the exiled monks, who
live in Dharamsala, India.
The youngest of those jailed, Lobsang Jangchub, 17, was
charged with helping a fellow monk named Gepe set himself on fire in March and
handed an eight-year sentence. Another monk from the same monastery, Lobsang
Tsultrim, 19, was given 11 years for his role in Gepe’s self-immolation, Radio
Free Asia said.
The other two convicted men, tried by Barkham People’s
Middle Court in Sichuan Province, were accused of “leaking news from inside Tibet to outside contacts,” Radio Free Asia
said. A layman, Bu Thubdor, 25, was given a seven-and-a-half year term, and
Lobsang Tashi, 26, a monk from Kirti Monastery, was sentenced to seven years.
The authorities have recently prosecuted scores of ethnic
Tibetans on charges of fomenting opposition to Chinese rule in Tibet and three
adjacent provinces with significant Tibetan populations. In August, a
17-year-old girl was given a three-year sentence for distributing leaflets
calling for greater religious freedom and for the return of the Dalai Lama, the
exiled Tibetan leader. In June, a prominent monk was sentenced to seven years
for sending out photographs and information about the self-immolation of a
Buddhist nun, Reporters Without Borders said.
News of the self-immolations and the ensuing crackdown have
gone largely unreported in the Chinese news media.