Sobering

The Boston Globe today has published on their website pictures and brief bios of all of Boston's 2005 victims of homicide. Seventy-five people in all (so far - two days to go). It's a ten year high for murders in Boston. Looking at the pictures on this page you'll find that murder victims in Boston are mostly young black men. Just eye-balling it from the pictures I would say close to 90%. Reading through the page you'll find that the most prevalent way to be killed is to be shot, with stabbings a distant second.

I'm a conservative and put a great deal of faith in the U.S. Constitution. As such, I really do believe in the Second Amednment right of citizens to legally own and bear arms. At the same time, looking at a page full of people murdered with guns can't help but give any reasonable person serious cause. If we were a country with out prevalent, easy access to firearms would most of these people be alive? Logic tells me the answer is "absolutely!" Sure, some of those people may have been killed otherwise with a knife or other method, but more likely handguns are just far too easy a way to kill people.

Even still, I do not believe gun control laws will put this genie back in the bottle. It is an assumption on my part, but I don't think I'm that crazy to guess that most of the guns used in these crimes were handguns, and that most of them were illegally obtained. I do subscribe to the theory that if you make guns illegal (or just harder) to own, only the criminals will have the guns. Perhaps that's an oversimplification, but I do believe it's the case.

Looking at a map of where most of the killings took place, combined with the listed occupation for most of the murder victims, it's probably fair to state that most of these killings happened to lower income individuals. Given that the there is a clear dominant trend of a single demographic being victims, there must be a single overall cause, either environmental or cultural or something for this. I absolutely don't believe in a direct correlation between being poor and proneness to violence. Obviously, if that were the case you'd see a larger distribution of other races and more women who are also poor committing these crimes.

There must be an answer. Given that no one can wave a magic wand and make gun disappear, what is it? More police? More after-school programs? More role models? More welfare? More job training? More opportunity? More scholarships? More busing? Is there even a government solution to this problem? It would appear that somehow young African American men need to be reached en mass somehow, but what is it?