Comment by stickfigure

Comment by stickfigure 3 days ago

I remember the 70s and my experience was nothing like your mom's. Population centers have always been full of petty crime; rural places are still pretty free from crime. You can still move to plenty of towns with population <1000 in the US, and you'll have no trouble leaving your gun or laptop in your car there.

The one big difference though is today we have school shootings, so folks are pretty humorless about guns near schools. I'd love to hear your ideas for how to solve that, because they keep happening.

adamrezich 3 days ago

Your theory of urban/rural bifurcation is overly reductive. My city had a population of about 40,000 in the 70s (when guns were left in racks in the backs of trucks in the high school parking lot)—it's about twice that today. (I did however just return from visiting my wife's hometown in northern Idaho, which has a population of about 500, and indeed I did not feel the need to lock my car, despite keeping a firearm inside of it.)

I don't care to propose any solutions here, especially around such politically-volatile topics, because I believe the actual changes that transpired and the reasons for why they did are worth acknowledging and investigating first.

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pixl97 3 days ago

40,000 people live within a few miles of me. That isn't a city, that's a suburb or a town.
Also the leaving guns in vehicles thing could also be affected by another number here. And that is miles driven per capita and vehicles owned per household averages. That is you could have the same total number of thieves that steal guns, especially among those with more poverty, but as you increase the number of cars groups that could no longer afford them have them. Also the number of miles driven means the potential thieves are covering way more territory.
Anecdotally I heard about things like this in the late 80s and early 90s. Farmers were complaining that groups out of Chicago were running off with all the stuff they'd leave around all over the farm.
In addition starting in the mid 70s was a long recessionary period (stagflation) after decades of a good economy in the 60s that shook the US to the core.

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- adamrezich 3 days ago
  
  I assure you there's quite the difference between a city (that even has “City” it its name!) of 80,000, and a town of 500. It's easy to see conflating the two as “high density population dweller ignorance” for anyone who has lived in or near all three (500, 80,000, 1M+).
  
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  pixl97 3 days ago
  
  I mean yea, I'm from bumfuk nowhere farmland where there was nothing close. Of course that meant a lot in the late 70s where you might get 3 channels on the TV. We were very disconnected from the world back then.
  That's no longer true. Everyone has a cellphone pretty much everywhere. You don't think of hoodlum stuff while bored, you watch a livestream of it and think "I could do that too".
  We live in a much different world now.
  
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stickfigure 3 days ago

> actual changes that transpired and the reasons for why they did
Well go on then. Let's hear your theory out loud.

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- adamrezich 3 days ago
  
  Feel free to assume whatever you'd like and ascribe whatever implicit outgroup labels you'd like as well.
  
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mothballed 3 days ago

There's definitely a rural element to it. I left probably $10,000 worth of construction equipment out for the stealing for 2 years while building my house in the country. Just totally unmonitored vacant property, surrounded by poor people in trailers who badly could have used the money if they cared to steal it. Of course neighbors would never think to steal it because burning your name in a small town is the same thing as banishment or starving to death because you'll never get another job / lover / friend / help.

It would have been gone in 15 minutes at my house in the city.

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wat10000 3 days ago

In a rural area, there’s only a handful of people who would notice the opportunity. Odds are pretty good that they won’t take it, because most people aren’t thieves. In the city, thousands of people will spot the opportunity and odds are good that a few of them are thieves.

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