Shooting isn’t us, say organized gangsters
Cops on the Centaure squad talked to people representing organized crime – the Hells and the old mob – on the weekend and they said the outbreak of shooting isn’t their doing, but blamed loosely grouped street gangs and rappeurs. But as Daniel Renaud points out, it takes organization to import so many weapons.
Blork 11:59 on 2022-08-30 Permalink
Does it though? I find a lot of flawed reasoning in the piece.
It mentions that half of the firearms murders in the past year are linked to organized crime, but that means that half of them were NOT linked to organized crime. If the firearms murder rate has doubled, but the rate of organized crime firearms murders is stable, then all those other firearms murders might have no connection to organized crime.
Also, and perhaps more important: basing one’s thinking about this just on firearms MURDERS is missing the point. The vast majority of illegal firearms usage does not result in murder. There are all those non-fatal shooting (numbers are way up) and in particular all those shootings where no one was injured (shooting at cars, at buildings, in the air, etc.) which (AFAIK) has gone way, way up. Those are the numbers you need to look at if you want to know how much firearms use has increased, not just the murder rate.
One needs to consider all forms of gunplay. Organized crime people don’t tend to go around shooting things up for kicks. That’s really the domain of excitable and disorganized kids.
As to where are the guns coming from; much has been written in the past year about ghost guns made from parts ordered from the internet and made with 3D printers, plus there’s that case of a bag of guns being flown by a drone across the St. Claire river near Detroit getting snagged in a tree on the Canadian side.
That begs the question of how many drone-loads of guns have NOT been snagged in a tree. There are literally hundreds of places along the New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine border where drones can fly across undetected. That doesn’t require organized crime (at least not in the traditional sense.)
I think the big shift has been that drone technology has emboldened people to smuggle things more than ever before.
Ephraim 13:17 on 2022-08-30 Permalink
Can someone send the cops a copy of https://www.amazon.ca/Blood-Gun-Money-Firearms-Trafficking/dp/1635572789 so that they can shut up and stop wondering where the guns come from?
Kate 13:49 on 2022-08-30 Permalink
Tsk tsk, Ephraim, no no. There’s no French version of that book.
Ephraim 17:24 on 2022-08-30 Permalink
Doesn’t make it less relevant… just harder to read… It also comes in an audiobook… since most of them can’t read….
Blork 20:23 on 2022-08-30 Permalink
Doesn’t make it less relevant to human beings who want to learn about the situation, but it makes it less relevant to CAQbots who simply wave off anything that’s not available in French.
Ephraim 10:59 on 2022-08-31 Permalink
@Blork – There is 2 part interview of the author on Jordan Harbinger’s podcast