In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)(crimereads.com) |
In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)(crimereads.com) |
This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in front of the TV not far from it all and being shocked at the level of wanton destruction.
California was always a wild place since its inception and before it was ever a part of the US--many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin.
LA in the 80s was also Ground Zero for Gang warfare in the US, so us multi-generationals lived through that and adapted and we are am entirely different breed to the transplants and the rest of the US as fires and earthquakes were also taking place alongside those events, as those didn't stop either.
And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID. In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.
Apparently while we were there my dad witnessed the car in front of him being robbed at gunpoint, but decided perhaps that was a one off, don't tell the family, perhaps it's fine... then the exact same thing happened the next night at nearly the same spot.
So that was the end of my potential US childhood.
It was also the inspiration for Heat’s shootout!
The North Hollywood robbers had illegally modified their weapons to enable full-auto fire. Since well before 1997, modifying guns like this has been a federal felony that gets you a ten-year prison sentence. That's a prohibition that predates the Assault Weapon Ban, which had nothing to do with full-auto weapons.
The AWB has since expired, and doing your own full-auto conversion will still get you ten years in the slammer. You can buy a full-auto weapon, but only after an extensive background check and approval of your local sheriff, if your state allows it, and only if the weapon was manufactured before 1986.
The movie Heat, of course, also had its robbers using full-auto. Incidentally, the movie came out before the North Hollywood robbery; many people have actually blamed the movie for inspiring the real robbers, one of whom owned a copy of the movie!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout
Only semi-correct, they had full-auto AK47s and extended mags, all of which at the time could be purchased and legally owned with a special stamp by the ATF [0]. As a child a friend's father had one he would bring out on new years to only short lived amusement in the neighborhood as we all lived in a densely populated suburb near a major freeway.
But without them, yes, you couldn't just go to a store and buy one off the shelf.
0: https://legalbeagle.com/8731203-class-three-stamp-through-at...
The North Hollywood shootout was in 1997, Heat came out two years prior.
I always heard it was events in California (and Diane Feinstein being a key player) that created the ban, but I never heard a specific event in SoCal being the catalyst. Wikipedia cites a school shooting in Stockton in 1989 and an office shooting in San Francisco in 1993. Outside of the state, Wikipedia also cites a mass shooting in Killeen, TX.
> LA in the 80s was also Ground Zero for Gang warfare in the US
Might be true, but also: the 1980s was near the peak of violent crime certainly nation-wide, maybe worldwide. Lots written and studied on this topic. Theories about lead poisoning and all that. Probably multiple factors. But a lot of the discussion then was on urban crime. People thought that cities were dangerous. I'm glad that the last 20 years or so has largely seen a reversal of that.
Lately there has been a resurgence, especially in the political right, of the cities are dangerous mantra. It seems pretty odd to me.
Urban violence (such as in Chicago and Minneapolis) might have something to do with it.
[0] https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-police-homicides-murder-repo...
[1] https://www.startribune.com/staggering-surge-in-violent-carj...
Alta California was first colonized in 1769, not long before a bunch of British colonies on the other side of the continent that had been settled for quite a while broke off to form the USA; Baja was colonized from 1683. Neither predates British colonization of North America, and the colonization of Alta California only barely predates US independence.
Sir Francis Drake declared English sovereignty over the area of SF bay in 1579 and named it New Albion (New Britain, from Albion, the old Greek name for Britain).
> In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.
I'm curious what you mean by this. What would change for you to be tempted to go back and what do the people that are leaving since COVID have to do with it?
A bank robbery every hour?
And I thought my nostalgia for the leaded gasoline and burning asbestos tram breaks smells was odd.
More like a reminder that primitive tendencies can revert Society back to its violent mean really quickly and that in turn instilled a need to want to preserve what we have and build resilient communities to that end as we all felt vulnerable to that ever-present danger.
The fact that no one speaks to their neighbors now is a stark contrast to my childhood in the late 80s and 90s where every kid on the block was a part of the after school 'clique' in one way or another and we looked out for each other so we helped one another in times of need with no real hesitation. It was common to have parents drop off the neighbors kids at different school in exchange for a place to hang out after school and place at the dinner table that night while the parents worked OT etc... This was rotational and we often were at each others homes on different days of the week.
Bi-monthly neihborhood bbqs/potlucks were typical things and were way less tense then some mandated HOA sanctioned community watch meeting where people just snitch on each other and was more a casual event to eat and build bonds share a dish from your families native land with our local neighbors. Many of those people had to leave as things got more and more expensive as time went on and it was a somber experience even to this day.
Then, to me, it abruptly went completely away in the 2000s when ignoring your community completely became normal, and I'm guilty of this, too; I no longer wanted to be a part of the new crowds or integrate into the new ones and sought refuge Online instead as those crowds that were made up of 'less interesting people from somewhere else' so unless we had specific and obvious interests aligned I never bothered, and even then it would be short lived as they were built on very fickle forms of self-interest.
And this persisted until I left CA for the first time.
Again, its probably all survivor bias, and I knew way too many kids in the neighborhood or not far away who died due to gang violence (the shootings at the counter strike internet cafes were particular bad in my area [0]) so I"m not trying to glamorize that aspect. Its just that much like in places with incredibly cold and snowy winters you learn to appreciate one another and their roles in your Life, and since SoCal has perfect weather nearly all year around this was the closest thing that made us see past our superficial differences, and somehow latently knowing it could all go away in a flash gave a stark reminder of how valuable and integral that is to one's quality of Life. You hear this a lot amonst the Korean survivors of the LA riots when the Police abandoned them and left them to fend for themselves, that really hit hard for me and was what made me look past my previously held prejudice of foul smelling kimchi and started eating, cooking and enjoying their cuisine.
> And I thought my nostalgia for the leaded gasoline and burning asbestos tram breaks smells was odd.
I'm a big proponent of EV in a large part because I recall how light headed and nauseating I'd felt riding in the tailgate of a 70s pick up truck on the way to the local to in-n-out or to AM/PM as well as seeing images of the smog of LA would creep in on bad days and the poor air quality all year round was most of my Life as a kid. I don't desire for any of that, despite a large part of my career being tied to the Auto Industry I'm glad we're seeing EV taking over as I remember how orange and brown the sky looked back then.
0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/02/usa.duncancamp...
A combination of increased tech surveillance, longer prison sentences, and bank tellers holding very little cash--all of these factors make bank robbery much less lucrative than it was in the past.
This [1] is an eye-opening roundup of ~25 major studies that support the lead-crime hypothesis, including comparisons across countries & cultures. The evidence is pretty overwhelming and certainly changed my perspective on human nature, which for me had previously been influenced by both growing up around the violence in CA in the 80s-90s and the media culture that depicted and sensationalized it.
If you walk away from this thinking 'oh, humans are a lot less violent than I thought they were', you might find other beliefs built on top of that assumption also follow. These types of perspective shifts in life are rare, and very powerful.
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...
HARP
This is us. Bank Robbery. And
you're in the bank-robbery capital
of the world--
UTAH
1322 last year in LA county. Up 26
percent from the year before.
HARP
That's right. And we nailed over a
thousand of them. We did it by
crunching data. Good crime-scene
work, good lab work, and most importantly
good data-base analysis. Special agent Utah.
Are you receiving my signal?
UTAH
Zero distortion, sir.> a bank was robbed every hour of every day.
But the article itself clarifies they mean "each banking day" and the worst year had about seven robberies a day. Still a shocking amount, but not the 24 a day implied.
> 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day. On a particularly bad day for the FBI that year, bandits committed 28 bank licks
these are not the same statement. 'average ~1 per hour while banks are open' isn't the same as 'minimum 1 per hour', nor is it the same as 'every hour of every day'
Second hand because it was told/ re-enacted to me in lieu of recorded on vhs or similar.
Over time they closed the drive thru and eventually removed direct street access to the bank to try to discourage robbers.
Ah the good old days.
[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/05/u-s-secret-service-massi...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-bus...
[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-21/californ...
The real interesting tidbit was at the end I found... I wonder why SF?
Point Break came out in 1991. I wonder if that inspired some people.
For those that don't know, the plot is that a bunch of LA surfers knock off banks so they can spend the rest of their time surfing, and get away with it for a long time.
Lead–crime connection is the strongest explanation. Past lead exposure functions as a predictor for criminal activity. Crime starts to drop in every country after the use of leaded gasoline is forbidden.
New evidence that lead exposure increases crime https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-evide...
Best source short googling could find: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nothing-but-you-and-the-cows-an...
https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-soft...
Don't forget that you're only looking at LA right now and your claim that things "were objectively worse decades ago" only generalizes to the cities on the West/East Coast. In contrast, rural areas are worse off economically compared to 30, 40 years ago.
Not just voters, large portions of our representatives are also from that demographic.
That’s not to say the lead story is bunk, but, sadly, I don’t think you can draw the conclusion that those earlier rates were uniquely aberrant.
https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-soft...
Edit to add this link: https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting...
Don’t get too focused on St. Louis, in other words; as I said, homicide rates are up all over the country.
Another way to put it is that much of our behavior is dictated by our environment, and if we create an environment where extreme chemical, biological, psychological, and economic stressors are kept at bay, then humans are just not prone to a great deal of violence.
In 2020. Year of infamy.
Well... I agree that at least Scientology has died down a little (even though Shelly Miscavige is still missing), but televangelists are as strong as ever, and not just that Kenneth Copeland guy.
Afaik Canada saw a comparable drop in crime, over the same time-period, without starting to mass incarcerate people [0]
[0] https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I (Relevant stats and discussion start around 6:45, but the whole talk is rather worthwhile to watch)
We had Miami Vice, MacGyver, The A-Team, Knight Rider, and Battlestar Galactica back then.
And homes were still affordable places to live in.
All of which you saw in a 30 min episode of CHIPS, which aired in the 70s to the 80s, right? I'm not proud of these seedy days, in fact its something I think most of us are ashamed of entirely and would prefer to be solely known for tech, beaches and sunshine. But it isn't true, and it baffles me as a person who lived through that to see many people claiming this the worst CA has ever seen. It's definitely bad, and perhaps underscores why California should be its own Country in my opinion.
But we've been here and done that and to a much worse degree then proceeded to make a place for outsiders to come when it all went well, and they then jacked up the cost of living and made it a worst place to be and raise children only to flee in hard times so many times we should be used to it, but it still sucks to see California like this after all we did.
I've lived and worked all over the Western World, but California in the 90s was a magical place despite all the crazy stuff that actually would instill resilience and problem solving skills out of necessity in me since I was a child just to survive. Skills that I know I would have gotten if I grew up in Zurich, Vienna or Bavaria or some other placid place.
I just hope we get to see it once more as every time I go back it looks further and further away from the place I knew and loved.
It's also kind of weird how in the English-language sphere it's apparently only known/relevant for "copycat suicide" [0], when the implications for such a dynamic being true would be far more wide-reaching.
Journalist unions have created a set of guidelines that attempt to balance freedom to report with the need to protect the public. (For something more specific: when you report someone has died in a public place do not give detail information about where they died. If they jumped off a particular bridge do not name the bridge. (We have a little bit of research from survivors about how they pick locations and some of them say they're influenced by news reporting)).
On your wider point, all our broadcasters are aware of "imitative acts" and so they're very careful when showing children doing violent or dangerous things. Our advertising regulator will also ban some ads that show these things. There was an example from some time ago of a soft drink called "Tango". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_(advertisement)
> Nonetheless, Orange Man soon sparked large controversy in the media and in public after it was discovered children had copied the events of the advertisement in playgrounds and injured themselves; Rupert Howell, a Tango advertisement executive, stated in 2000 that Orange Man "sparked a playground craze" where "people used to go round sort of slapping each other and saying 'You've Been Tango'd', and it was all very entertaining and great fun. There were no problems until we got a phone call once from a surgeon who said 'look, I'm not the complaining type but I thought you'd like to know that I did an operation on a child this morning with a damaged ear drum, and I was wheeling him in to the operating table, and said to him 'what happened to you then?' and replied 'I got Tango'd.'"[6] As a result, Howell pulled the advertisement from television that afternoon,[6] although other reports erroneously state that the advertisement was banned
In discussions about New York there is a popular myth that policing caused the crime rate drop, and I think that is what the podcast was challenging. Not necessarily that there wasn't a drop at all. There was across the entire country. Not for the reasons some police departments would like to believe.
But taking actions alone is not really a good indicator for how effective these actions actually are, particularly on such complex socioeconomic topics like suicide where most likely a whole slew of factors play a role.
So while one could look at the UK, what's missing there is something to compare it to, as just comparing to other countries alone doesn't really say much about how much these actions actually factor in the differences.
> On your wider point, all our broadcasters are aware of "imitative acts" and so they're very careful when showing children doing violent or dangerous things.
Is that also why a Star Trek episode, that mentioned Irish unification as an example of "terrorism working", had that scene cut from being broadcast on UK TV? [0]
Those are the kind of consequences where the waters suddenly become very murky: Most people would probably agree with protecting vulnerable populations from something like suicide. But what if that logic is extended to trying to protect even not so vulnerable populations from the "wrong ideas"?
[0] https://www.irishpost.com/news/star-trek-the-next-generation...
Most of Europe sees them either as a business or as a cult (France) or as a threat to democracy (Germany, applicants to public service have to declare they're unaffiliated with the bunch). Worldwide, it's membership numbers are falling (https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2018/01/once-thriving-church-o...).
Many popular front people have either died off or deserted Scientology.
No, mainly because I lived in Switzerland and they have a long history of warfare and starvation as well; most don't realize the Swiss Pikemen/Mercenaries were the best of the Western World and were recruited for many other foreign militaries.
They were so well known for this craft in warfare that they still guard the Vatican to this day. Furthermore, up until WWII Switzerland has been a poor, mainly agrarian civilization that lived hand-to-mouth and were mainly made of of hardy, tough 'mountain folk' until the 19th Century. I lived in the Bernese Swiss alps in what I called my 'unabomber shack' during the Spring and Summer to prepare to move the cows up the Alps that only had a small oven, no running water, no electricity and no insulation. All it really was is just a single room attached to a barn; it was built really well and had been there for over a 100 years old, no one knew for sure, but what struck me is that this is how entire multi-generational families lived for centuries there. There were no lofty lives as Welles, and many like to think, for the majority of Swiss History until recently, and now youth suicide is a massive issue there, but I won't get into that now.
Orson Welles, like so many who have only read or stayed for short visits, took a very ignorant and narrow view of Swiss History if really believed that. I also lived in Italy which I could go even further in depth about, too.
Police at that point were mostly using 9mm pistols, .38 caliber revolvers, and 12 gauge shotguns, none of which were capable of penetrating the body armor. More heavily armed police such as SWAT were using MP5s, which shot 9mm as well.
The robbery lead to the distribution of higher velocity firearms like the M16 among the LAPD, and a similar incident in Miami lead to the adoption of the 10mm pistol cartridge by thy FBI.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150702091610/http://www.police...
Arrived in? Sure, mostly sailing around the coast and transitory land expeditions. So did the British in North America, on both coasts.
But as for establishing any kind of durable colonies (e.g., “California” as more than a name on a map), that came later, and well after British colonies like Virginia were established, especially in the case of Alta California.
The idea that California was some kind of established European colony earlier than British colonization of North America is what I was taking issue with.
the original post said
> pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism
Which is honestly not false, settlements in California formed about one century before the US independence.
Anyway, there were people living in what we call California today long before the Spanish arrived there...
However, if you go through proper channels it’s amazing what you’re allowed to own. In some states you can not only own a tank (that’s the easy part - you can even import one if the guns are disabled) but could also have it stay equipped with its standard issue .50cal gun! You won’t be allowed to drive it on public roads though. They are also cost prohibitive.
Hell, you can buy fighter jet if you’d like. But it has to be demilitarized which although still fun to fly would sort of limit your ability to maintain air superiority against a properly provisioned force.
Although to be fair, a lot of the crime is in areas the average HN user wouldn't be in. Most people are not worried about getting carjacked or mugged during their commute and have no reason to be. The US is a big place and problems that affect certain parts of it are usually not present throughout the whole country.
But it sure was exotic seeing American music coming and videos talking about murder and shooting like it's a cool thing.
Converting your own semi-auto to full auto is in now way legal then nor now.
Full auto guns are basically a rich man's toy and have been since well before new ones were outlawed in 1986. The practicality mostly isn't there for criminal use and they're real expensive to feed.
tl;dr - you don't "have to register" them, because by definition the ones that are legal are already registered. In '86 they stopped allowing new registrations for automatic weapons, but existing registered weapons were grandfathered in. US gun law considers the lower receiver to bear the "identity" of the weapon, so some pretty extensive modification can occur while it technically stays "the same gun" in a Ship of Theseus fashion.
Dubious.
Certainly, behavior is driven by perception of danger, but whether perception of danger generally tracks with actual danger or not is…less certain.
I know for child abduction and child assaults by those outside of the family that has historically not been the case; and perceived danger has increased as media focus increased despite decreasing actual danger, for several decades in a row.
I don’t see why similar (or opposite, if media focussed shifted away while actual danger increased) trends would occur with other forms of danger.
A Bushmaster XM-15 converted illegally to fire full auto with two 100-round Beta Magazines
A Heckler & Koch HK-91 semi automatic rifle with several 30-round magazines[38]
A Beretta 92FS Inox with several magazines
Three different civilian-model AK-47 style rifles converted illegally to fire full auto with several 75- to 100-round drum magazines, as well as 30-round box magazines.Unless MGs are treated differently than other NFA items in some way I'm unaware of, the new (2016) ATF rules no longer require CLEO (chief law enforcement officer) approval as part of the process, only notification.
Of course certain state laws still have a similar approval restriction in place to comply with state law, but local law enforcement can no longer hamstring the actual NFA process.
>The final rule affects the NFA regulations by:
>...
>...requiring that a copy of all applications to make or transfer a firearm, and the specified form for responsible persons (5320.23), be forwarded to the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) of the locality in which the applicant/transferee or responsible person resides; and
>eliminating the requirement for certification signed by the CLEO.
https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/final-rule-41f-bac...
Example:
These are legal somehow in USA? Can you please trace how and prove it with links?
I have zero affiliation with this site, they just have a large, dynamic inventory so it makes for fun browsing for me.
0- https://www.impactguns.com/machine-guns/
1- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_II_weapons#Any_other_w...
Be warned that they cost as much as a car.
The homicide rate in St. Louis bottomed out in 2003 at a rate of 21.8 per 100k. By 2014 it had more than doubled to 49.9. By 2015 it had nearly tripled to 59.3 per 100k. (It’ll end this year in the 70s per 100k). The rates have been rising for a long time. It’s not just 2020.
And the trend is similar in other cities.
The Vox link you previously posted shows the large spike (+~30%) being 2020 related.
The 21.8/100k you cite for St Louis in 2003 was also abnormally and suspiciously low, as 2002 and 2004 were in the 30s/100k. I wouldn't baseline anything off a single local outlier that's 50% off from other years. Perhaps a statistical / data collection anomaly? You can see in 2004 the rate was about 35/100k, while in 2013 it was 38/100k, a scant change.
You can see that data in context within a chart in this NYT article from 2015 [2] which discusses some possible factors in St Louis' persistently high crime. 2014 and onwards is likely skewed considerably by the Ferguson unrest, and it sounds like St Louis might still be dealing with that alongside other factors.
Outside the local context, none of this data at a macro scale looks like the trend we see in the 70s-80s that the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to describe though. Crime nationwide has indeed been growing slightly since 2015... to hypothesize about why we're seeing this, I'd guess it's largely due to loss of opportunity and rising income inequality leading to poverty and desperation, which our recent economic policies have only been worsening. But I'm absolutely no expert in the subject, just trying to figure things out like you are.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/us/st-louis-puzzles-over-...
https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343955297073770496?...
These charts very clearly show an uptick in the nationwide homicide rate starting in 2014. It then levels off. And then there’s a big jump again this year.
This is entirely consistent with my claim that rates are way up nationwide and that they started going up before 2020.
It wasn't presented as a counterexample, it was presented as grounds for doubting the mechanism for the effect you describe.
Increased danger -> increased perceived danger -> behavior which attempts to mitigate danger is a nice theory, but it relies on deltas in perceived danger corresponding to deltas in actual danger.
If deltas in perceived danger that manifestly do drive behavior are driven by processes that are independent of actual danger, your argument no longer makes sense.
Or, you know, not live in perpetual fear of society breaking down, which is something afforded to us by thousands of years of progress and innumerable sacrifices.
Numbers are spiking for 2020.
I wonder why? A global pandemic, mass unemployment, lockdowns, political tensions.
And, no, it isn’t just 2020. The homicide rate in St. Louis bottomed out in 2003 at a rate of 21.8 per 100k. By 2014 it had more than doubled to 49.9. By 2015 it had nearly tripled to 59.3 per 100k.
And it’s even higher now. It’ll end this year in the 70s per 100k, eclipsing the 1993 high. It’s been a steady march up from the bottom.
And the trend is similar in other cities.
Regarding crime, there is one obvious answer. Inequality. The US Gini coefficient has been going up for 3 decades, I think.
The reduction effect from getting rid of leaded gasoline could only outweigh this for so long...
Poor people commit more crimes and you're starting to have more and more poor people.
https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343955297073770496?
These charts very clearly show an uptick in the nationwide homicide rate starting in 2014. It then levels off. And then there’s a big jump again this year.
This is entirely consistent with my claim that rates are way up nationwide and that they started going up before 2020.
https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting...
https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/firearms/forms...
"De facto banned" for an ordinary citizen is an accurate way to describe it.
* You're a Hollywood armorer
* You develop or manufacture automatic firearms for government agencies
* You're a security contractor who has been provided automatic firearms as part of a federal contract
* You're a major museum displaying militaria
1. Is nationwide crime up 2019 -> 2020? We agree, yes it is, and quite a bit! This link, as well as previous ones show that. My hunch is covid and its economic fallout is likely the primary factor.
2. Is nationwide crime up in the last 10 years? We agree, they are somewhat.
3. Are local crime rates in St Louis up? Sure, but thats a bit besides the point I was originally making, which was related to nationwide crime and the lead-crime hypothesis, as local factors can add noise to analysis.
4. Do recent nationwide crime trends look anything like the massive bump in nationwide crime the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to explain, thus potentially invalidating the hypothesis? This is the question I was asking. I believe recent crime trends do not invalidate it.
As I stated before, "none of this data at a macro scale looks like the trend we see in the 70s-80s that the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to describe". Later [1] in the tweet thread you just posted, the author shows a chart of murder stats going back to 1960. It shows a massive bump in the 70s-80s (up to 10 murders per 100k) followed by a sharp drop through the 90s (down to fewer than 6 murders per 100k). This has not been replicated since, ergo, current crime trends are not sufficient to refute the hypothesis.
[1] https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343955297073770496
Yes, I agree. I think your response here shows that we're actually closer in agreement than it first seemed. That's my fault, I think. I don't think the lead hypothesis is bunk. (My initial comment perhaps made it seem like I was saying otherwise.) It has a lot of explanatory power. I also don't think we're in exactly the same position we were in the 90s, for lots of reasons.
But I do think the lead hypothesis lulled a lot of people into repeating the claim about falling crimes rates for so long that many of them have forgotten to check to see if it's still true. And while there are lots of interesting debates to be had about why homicides have been higher recently, the fact is that they have been!
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/08/murder-rate-d...
Allowing abortion in the US did not change anything in other countries. Crime rates have dropped in every country shortly after leaded gasoline was phased out.
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/116/2/379/1904...
https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalize...
Birth rates.
And with declining birth rates, comes a decline in the number of youth, meaning "more of the population" is of an older age. Men are typically at their most aggressive when young adults, and those which have started families, have a different perspective on life.
Note: not saying the above is the cause, but I do believe it to be a valid theory.
edit: it is also plausible that multiple things cause one effect.
That's caused by providing at least somewhat decent sexual education in schools, although the US is still lacking in mandating sex ed or mandating medically accurate sex ed (=banning "abstinence only").
https://uk.reuters.com/article/health-testosterone-levels-dc...
The whole thing hinges on the definition of Strong/Hard/Weak/Good and how you define them.
For example who is stronger, a turn the other cheek reverend or an eye for an eye preacher?
Maybe, but rates are back up decades after we banned lead.
“Ok, well it’s uniquely the St. Louis police.”
Nope, sorry. Rates are up everywhere.
“Well then it’s just 2020! What a weird year!”
Nope. Rates have been rising for years.
“Ah, well then it’s obviously inequality.”
Why do people think not only that there has to be an immediate and obvious explanation for this trend, but also that they know exactly what it is?
For that matter, why are people so anxious to explain this away? It’s very confusing.
The fact is we don’t know why it’s happening. It’s complicated. It’s definitely happening. And we don’t know why. It’s ok to say, “I don’t know.”
For example Eastern European countries generally have moderate to low inequality levels and low GDP per capita. South American countries have high to verify high inequality and comparable GDPs per capita. Eastern Europe is much safer statistically than South America.
Ignore this at your own peril...
Mainly because you won't be there when it happens when it happens, but would you feel the same if you felt earthquakes, nuclear effluence spikes, droughts or landslides from the few times it rained, plus all the aforementioned calamity? It's a visceral feeling that you carry with you for the rest of your Life, and it manifests in different ways depending on the person one of the most prevalent being depression and anxiety as I've seen far too many succumb to alcholism, drug abuse and SSRIs just to cope with the antipathy and eventually apathy towards World around them.
That's what I (and many more like me endured in that period in CA) saw and lived while I lived there until my early 20s, so we adapted (as I'm multi-generational) and I personally sought to apply my skill-set to what I felt had the best chance of ensuring we as a Species transitioned to a sustainable system that spanned: Renewable and sustainable Ag, Farm to table seasonal cuisine, Energy (solar), EV, Currency/Monetary system (Bitcoin) and then I got stupidly ambitious and almost made it to SpaceX this year.
Again, you can take your placid (in my view monotonous and short sighted) and insular existence but the truth is I always wanted to live my young adult Life this way and I have inspired more to pick up where I left off. I wanted what I went through to be for something in order to be a part of something that helps us transition out of this horrid system that has devastated our ecosystem and now looking back on it all I know I did something right.
Basically, if you teach kids about sex and anticonception and condoms, they are less likely to do it and more likely to use this condoms and generally behave more safely.
On the other hand, abstinence only education is associated with more pregnancies.
In 1986, they stopped accepting new registrations for automatic guns. So there's a fixed supply of legal automatic firearms that normal people can own.
Read more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act#:~:tex....
Why do people want them? Is it just a hobby, or is there some utility I'm unware of?
Outside of the military they have no utility whatsoever.
Another nit pick: the approval is not some sort of interview or questionnaire as of why you need it. There is so-called ATF stamp (i.e. $200 for silencer) than you need to submit altogether with FBI fingerprints. These days mojority of ATF applications is registered thru "trust", instead of an individual. This creates all sorts of issues for LE in case they want to run extra background on you etc. So 90-something % of people chose $50 ATF "trust" that Sheriff cannot technically decline over the other option which is petition as individual and getting close to 100% chance of denial. The biggest hurdle is not some LE not liking your tattoo, its that ATF has a year long backlog. So you pay for your FA $25,000 today but its only delivered to your local licensed gun store, and they won't let you pick it up until ATF sends them document with green light. That take sup to 1.5 year these days. You can come and touch it and take few photos but they will not allow you to load it of course, or to take it out (including shooting range).
Finally, as OT mentions fixed supply, a so-called lower receiver of a fully automatic gun, a piece of metal not much bigger than a door handle (which does not even have any fancy engineering) is literally the most expensive piece of metal that you can buy on American soil. Some examples in extremely good shape go for $35,000 these days (check gunbroker dot com)
~~The Assault Weapons Ban only applied to new guns.~~ ATF policy change, not AWB. Existing guns were grandfathered in.
Guns have many interchangeable parts. The part of the gun that the government considers to be the "legal definition" is a part called the lower receiver. You can change almost anything about a gun as long as you keep the lower receiver and comply with any other laws.
So if you buy an old MAC-10 lower receiver that was manufactured before the new ATF policy, and add an adapter [1] that allows it to be combined with the non-lower parts from an AR-15, you can create a completely legal Frankenrifle with mostly new parts!
This isn't even the craziest thing you can do with gun loopholes in the USA. "Pistol braces" [2], originally made for war veterans with amputations to shoot small rifles, have pretty much obsoleted restrictions on short-barreled rifles. "Ghost guns" [3], i.e. lower receivers that have no serial number and do not appear in any database, are easily made by anyone with access to CNC tools (including a few hours rental for a few hundred bucks). 3D printed pistols are becoming a thing [4], although they are not very durable.
1: https://aandsconversions.com/2018/11/25/the-next-big-thing-f...
2: https://www.sb-tactical.com/product-category/brace/
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_gun
4: https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/jzik44/magdump_monday...
You are right, it was mostly a ban based on superficial features like the much feared bayonet mount. But there were two bans based on magazine capacity.
It did ban magazines with more than 10 round capacity. It also banned semi-automatic shotguns with more than 5 round fixed magazine or a detachable magazine when in combination with folding stock or pistol grip.
My entire extended family mostly bailed out of NYC because they bought houses for $10-25k in the 70s and sold for 20x in the late 80s. That profit gave that generation a vault up the ladder and the prime the pump mortgage policy made a few rich.
With a decent down payment (lets say ~15%) that's still less than 5 years salary even with interest, which would be completely acceptable terms especially since cost of living was way more affordable back then and the population had ~10 million people less than today in the 90s. Just to give you context that's more in population increase than many US states have in totality!
The problem comes from the fact that even with most FHA loans, decent down payments and average(non-FAANG) middle class income wages you're still looking at 15+ years of salary with a home with no repair clauses from banks that bought distressed proprieties on the cheap in the 2008 housing crises, and are selling far above their ATH. And that's assuming you can even get a home into escrow before external demand or Chinese investors fleeing the mainland pay cash for it sight unseen for something they will just at best rent out on Airbnb or let decay as its better than the alternative of keeping it in fiat before the CCP takes it.
Personally speaking NY is exactly what I didn't want CA to become, and slowly it started to resemble it more and more in all the negative ways; the recent lockdowns from incompetent politicians with deluded presidential aspirations only highlighted how much they have in common now.
I'm not a protectionist and I welcome(d) people to come work and live in CA, by my issue is that in the process it stripped a lot of what was good about it away and enhanced a lot of the worst parts instead.
Personally speaking with all of that culture and atmosphere lost I don't think it's worth it. And I think that one guy below was right, California will probably never go back to what it was back in the 90s and I should probably just be satisfied I got to experience it all.
Places change, and places with little historical roots as most of the US tend to change even faster. That’s just how it is.
I recently started a mortgage and the guidance I regularly saw was that your home price should not exceed 2.5 years of your income. And, this is with very low interest rates, esp compared to the 80's.
I don't think I couldn't afford the monthly payments on a house that was 5x our household income, even after 20% down and only 3% APR. Then again, maybe I could, but I'm more conservative with my wallet and prefer to have more cash on hand and other investments.
Your cost of living comparison is apt though. Maybe I'd be more comfortable with my mortgage being a larger % of my take home if everything else were significantly cheaper....
-However, if interest is at 11-15%, chances are inflation was in the high single digits - so as long as wages stayed reasonably level (in real terms), you weren't too bad off.
(In 80s Norway, my parents paid nigh on 20% interest on their home loan - but inflation hovered around the 10-12% mark and you got a 100% tax deduction for interest payments, making debt a good deal for a lot of people. Hence, people borrowed more money than ever before as credit was effectively free. Stop me if you've heard this one before.)
What could possibly go wrong? Sigh.
So does this mean the “crime paradise” was a better more prosperous time for people to live in than tech? If so, what does that say about modern society that our most depraved decade was actually better?
There’s people literally pooping on the streets in California. Do you think those people would be able to afford a toilet of their own if this was the 80s? Was homelessness then as bad as it is now? In our progress forward in technology has tech actually made California worse for people as a whole?
Yeah, I remember the Valley in the 90s... a lof of it looked a lot like downtown LA which I'm was never exactly a fan of.
But being in San Jose back then in the 90s looked and smelled like Chinatown when it was buzzing, Sunnyvale and Mountain View had a certain feel that is completely gone now it felt electric for reasons I didn't full understand and would only come to realize how significant what was happening there was a decade or so later.
I never went to the East bay until recently, but that feels like a very watered down version of what it was back then to me.
I guess it's survivor bias guiding my words, especially since I had close encounters with stuff like that growing up too; but having a choice of which one to deal with I'd stay with 90s CA to raise a family then somewhere like modern Geneva with all its amenities and manicured existence.
Joni Mitchell :)
It was with the opening of the commercial Internet in the 90's that it all started changing. The new companies weren't in boxed products destined for retail: they started replacing retail. You didn't go to a users' group to learn, you subscribed to Usenet or email. And so on. So even by the early 2000's, things started to feel hollowed out in SV.
It's not a California-specific problem. Dallas had tent cities in the mid-90s that the local news would occasionally report on. Seattle has had a variety of encampments, from "the Jungle" to "Nickelsville" to "Skid Row" and older.
We see the problem more now. We don't like it, but we also don't do much to deal with it. So it festers, because we're too self-centered to spend the tax dollars at the state and federal levels to do programs like Housing First, but too polite to just round up the homeless population and drop them in a woodchipper like most people on Nextdoor seem to want. Instead, we leave cities and counties to work it out for themselves while their suburban neighbors spend tax dollars on luring businesses out of the urban core because it is "so dirty."
That site states homelessness across the country is down 12% from 2007 - 2019, but it is up 9% in California in the same time period.
I think this validates asking the question of whether or not tech has been detrimental to general human welfare in the state of California.
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/30/652572292/working-while-homel...