Clayton Cramer & SF Chronicle on inner cities and crime

The scary part is that that situation can't possibly be stable for long. A society where everybody, or even a majority of people, were psychopaths would fly apart within days; you couldn't have the cooperation social life needs unless you could trust your neighbors.

What, other than pressure from the outside, is keeping the 'hood together and how long can it last? In what way would the "flying apart" happen, and what would the people in the ghetto end up doing once the ghetto was no longer a viable place to remain?

Me, I'm glad to be four to five hours' drive away from the nearest such area myself. That might be just about enough...

If I read the article correctly, the minimal stabilizing force is the older generations (typically 2nd- or 3rd-degree relatives) who give the quasi-orphaned children a place a sleep while they learn the criminal trade from older relatives/acquaintances.

I have a morbid curiosity about what the "fly apart" phase would look like, once the internal stabilizing forces in the neighborhood evaporate.

As Cramer says, there may not be a Constitutional solution.

Gun owners need to better appreciate that inner city violence is THE primary driver behind the incessant calls for gun control, however ineffective. Gun ownership is not threatened by the mall crazies, but it is jeopardized by the urban war zones created by fifty years of nanny liberalism. We may be physically safer in suburban or rural areas, but there's no escaping the political fallout.