The greater Charleston area saw a surge in homicides last year, with a steady parade of violence from Jan. 1 until Christmas Day, when a 17-year-old was cut down by gunfire on the streets of the Holy City’s East Side neighborhood. In all, 66 people died in homicides in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties – a 40 percent increase from 47 deaths in 2013.
The death toll is even more staggering when placed in context with the region’s murder count for the past 14 years. Since 2001, 709 people have been slain in the greater Charleston area at a rate of about one every seven days, a Post and Courier analysis has found. The review also determined that:
Gun violence fueled much of the bloodshed in 2014, accounting for nearly eight out of every 10 killings. Since 2001, guns have been used in 76 percent of all killings in the three counties.
Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s local paper.
Is the threat of incarceration a deterrent to gang members who use guns? I think not. Incarceration is additional street cred on the vitae of a Buster.
Misleading headlines may do more to shape public opinion than the content of an article itself.
I would submit the violence has nothing to do with the guns. It is the deeply embedded cultural beliefs and practices of the ethnic groups that commit the violence and see it as a way of life. Take those ethnic groups out of the mix and gun violence would go down to next to zero.