Originally posted by Teinosuke
How does it compare to other big cities in the US? Big cities generally have more crime than rural areas, so the comparison with "the rest of the US" is meaningless.
I see too that you've chosen to ignore Hugo Rifkind's article about the enormous difference between rates of gun crime in the US, with its generally liberal gun laws, and the UK, wit ...[text shortened]... ve ones. Looks like UK laws, if applied in the US, would save you about 30,000 lives a year.
Comparisons across oceans and of different cultures tend to be misleading at best.
Bloody genocides in places like Rwanda, and to some extent in Sudan happen without firearms or with minimal effective use of them. The Rwanda massacres were almost exclusively done with machetes. The militias in Sudan are often armed, but tend to use machetes as well preferring the up-close
violence.
I recently watched a movie based on a true story of an American who armed a small village and assisted in its defence in Sudan. Arming these Black peasant farmers is the only way to save them from already armed Islamic militias.
Historically, weapons have often been blames for increased killing. Shaka, the Zulu chief, was both an inventive warrior and a tactical genius. The Zulu tribes had warred between each other mostly ineffectively with not too many even getting hurt. Their weapon of choice was the spear, thrown long distance with poor velocity and accuracy. Up close it wasn't much more effective. Shaka improvised a short machete like sword, which could slash and thrust at close range. He combined this with phalanx formations and flanking attacks. He very quickly defeated the other chiefs and even the mighty Brits. Early on, a lot more people died in those battles, but once in power, the regular struggles among the Zulus no longer happened for some time, saving lives and bring prosperity.
Cultures tend to evolve slowly, and surely. Changes made without such deliberation are almost always doomed to failure, not because the motives of the changers are bad, but because they fail to grasp the unseen as well as the seen (Bastiate).
Gun laws became very restrictive in the city of Detroit in the '20s, a time when there was a huge Black middle class in the city. A Black physician's home was surrounded by a mob, and the doctor shot a couple of them. This precipitated gun laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of the public, particularly the Black public. The principle lobbying group to pass those laws was the KKK.
Over the years, Detroit has repeatedly earned the title of "Murder Capital of the US" despite harsh prohibitions on firearms ownership, ballistic fingerprinting, and registration. Since Statewide shall issue CCW law, gun crime and even gun murders are down considerably, although still way too high.