For the third consecutive year, Flint has reached 50 homicides in one year.A couple things stand out for me in this sad story which make me question some of the commonly accepted "facts" about gun violence.
Three homicides on Sunday brought the city's homicide total to 51, according to the Flint Journal's count. There have been four homicides since Friday.
Here's a look back at the 51 lives lost to violence in Flint this year.
The pace of homicides this year is ahead of both 2011, when there were 57 homicides all year, and the record-breaking year 2010, when there were 66 homicides.
The city didn't record its 50th homicide last year until late October. In 2010, it hit 50 homicides in the first half of October, according to Journal records.
If you click on that link to the 51 victims, you'll see that a full 90% died by the gun. Yet, we always hear that about 60% of all murders are committed with a gun. Is it possible that Flint is that far off the national mean? Or is something wrong with that oft-repeated 60% claim?
Secondly, the pro-gun crowd keeps telling us that crime is going down, that gun violence is on the decrease, as if that's reason to abandon all attempts to lower it further. But, Flint, Michigan, like many other cities we read about seems to be getting worse all the time. Violence, especially gun violence increases year after year. How do we reconcile these two ideas?
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
