Of those crises, urban gun violence is the most addressable based on the evidence and tools available today. Mass shootings are episodic, acute events that are difficult to study or predict; urban homicides are chronic, making them more amenable to research and analysis. And what that research points to is a set of strategies with consistent track records of reducing shootings when done the right way.
Urban violence is also the linchpin of concentrated urban poverty, holding all the other conditions of inequality — joblessness, homelessness, poor education, and health — in place. That’s why we must put urban violence first in terms of sequence, if not importance. Until we pull this pin, poverty in our cities will remain as persistent as ever. A neighborhood that is not safe will never prosper.
To reduce community gun violence, we don’t actually need new laws. Instead, we need policies that recognize three core truths about the problem.
1. Shootings cluster among small numbers of people, places, and behaviors. More than a quarter of homicides in 2015
occurred in neighborhoods containing just 1.5 percent of the American population and collectively covering an area smaller than Green Bay, Wisconsin. And even in those communities,
as few as 1 percent of a city’s population are responsible for the majority of fatal encounters.
2. Violent crime responds to both positive and negative incentives.
Deterrence works, but so does providing alternatives to people who too often are seen as beyond saving.
3. Violence takes root where law enforcement is viewed as illegitimate. The episodes of excessive force and policies of discriminatory stops that have filled front pages and Justice Department reports leave people of color in resource-starved neighborhoods wary of cooperating with police. A
rise in unsolved shootings leaves victims and their friends and family turning to revenge. The old slogan carries a
deadly truth: Where there is no justice, there is no peace.