Quote Originally Posted by Heartless Angel View Post
Those 4 cities? Probably has a lot to do with the fact that they're overrun by unemployed welfare dependents and have been run by democrats for the better part of a century. Those cities are all gang infested shitholes. Gangs account for the vast majority of gun homicides in all 4 of those cities. And if you just removed that, we'd be beating most of the planet. If THAT doesn't demonstrate that what we have is much more a culture problem than a gun problem, nothing will.
Pretty much exactly this. Not to mention, I guarantee that obesity rates are equally abnormally high in these areas. It's an unfortunate cycle but it exists. Could you blame systematic racism as the impetus? I guess but that's a lazy reach.

A lack of education, no matter the reason will always lead to poor choices.
A lack of education also prevents the ability to have better economic opportunities.
When you tell your kids collectively that their only options in life to escape poverty are to become sports stars or rappers, you're immediately putting them at a huge disadvantage. Very few make it to the top.
A lack of education leads to less economic opportunities, and combined with the typical sense of entitlement that we as Americans seem to have, minimum wage jobs are seen as beneath us. For whatever reason, no job is better than a shitty job in their minds.
Combine that with a lack of income, and you can't do much socially. Sex is free, but condoms or the pill cost money, so lots of babies.
A salad is expensive, but you can eat a few thousand calories for a few dollars with the dollar menu.
More babies thrown into the same environment, where education isn't emphasized, and after a while, crime seems to be the best option. Guns aren't hard to get illegally, and you're poor, dumb and angry.

Truth be told, we did this to ourselves. Not with racism, but with corporate greed. I guarantee that if you brought back manufacturing jobs and paid a fair living wage, you could easily reduce poverty. Teach people how to work and give them incentives and rewards for hard work well done.