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AntiSocial Extrovert
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https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/23/surprising-geography-of-gun-violence-00092413
Listen to the southern right talk about violence in America and you’d think New York City was as dangerous
as Bakhmut on Ukraine’s eastern front.
In October, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed crime in New York City was “out of control” and blamed it on George Soros.
Another Sunshine State politico, former president Donald Trump, offered his native city up as a Democrat-run dystopia, one of those places
“where the middle class used to flock to live the American dream are now war zones, literal war zones.” In May 2022, hours after 19 children
were murdered at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott swatted back suggestions that the state
could save lives by implementing tougher gun laws by proclaiming “Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”
In reality, the region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence,
while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s.
On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute,
regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.
If you grew up in the coal mining region of eastern Pennsylvania your chance of dying of a gunshot is about half that
if you grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, three hundred miles to the southwest. Someone living in the most rural counties of
South Carolina is more than three times as likely to be killed by gunshot than someone living in the equally rural counties of
New York’s Adirondacks or the impoverished rural counties facing Mexico across the lower reaches of the Rio Grande.
The reasons for these disparities go beyond modern policy differences and extend back to events that predate not only the
American party system but the advent of shotguns, revolvers, ammunition cartridges, breach-loaded rifles and the American republic itself.
The geography of gun violence — and public and elite ideas about how it should be addressed — is the result of differences at once regional,
cultural and historical. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into the problem are revealed.
To do so you need to more accurately delineate America’s regional cultures. Forget the U.S. Census divisions, which arbitrarily divide the country into a Northeast, Midwest, South and West using often meaningless state boundaries and a willful ignorance of history. The reason the U.S. has strong regional differences is because our swath of the North American continent was settled by rival colonial projects that had very little in common, often despised one another and spread without regard for today’s state boundaries.
Listen to the southern right talk about violence in America and you’d think New York City was as dangerous
as Bakhmut on Ukraine’s eastern front.
In October, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed crime in New York City was “out of control” and blamed it on George Soros.
Another Sunshine State politico, former president Donald Trump, offered his native city up as a Democrat-run dystopia, one of those places
“where the middle class used to flock to live the American dream are now war zones, literal war zones.” In May 2022, hours after 19 children
were murdered at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott swatted back suggestions that the state
could save lives by implementing tougher gun laws by proclaiming “Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”
In reality, the region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence,
while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s.
On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute,
regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.
If you grew up in the coal mining region of eastern Pennsylvania your chance of dying of a gunshot is about half that
if you grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, three hundred miles to the southwest. Someone living in the most rural counties of
South Carolina is more than three times as likely to be killed by gunshot than someone living in the equally rural counties of
New York’s Adirondacks or the impoverished rural counties facing Mexico across the lower reaches of the Rio Grande.
The reasons for these disparities go beyond modern policy differences and extend back to events that predate not only the
American party system but the advent of shotguns, revolvers, ammunition cartridges, breach-loaded rifles and the American republic itself.
The geography of gun violence — and public and elite ideas about how it should be addressed — is the result of differences at once regional,
cultural and historical. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into the problem are revealed.
To do so you need to more accurately delineate America’s regional cultures. Forget the U.S. Census divisions, which arbitrarily divide the country into a Northeast, Midwest, South and West using often meaningless state boundaries and a willful ignorance of history. The reason the U.S. has strong regional differences is because our swath of the North American continent was settled by rival colonial projects that had very little in common, often despised one another and spread without regard for today’s state boundaries.
