[Spats McGee]

Originally Posted by Aguila Blanca

Although true, I don't see your opening statement as being all that important. The city (or town ... "municipality") is about the smallest political jurisdiction we have in the U.S. that falls under a single governmental jurisdiction.

If we start at the international level, we can say that some countries have higher rates of crime than others. Oh, but wait! Some of each country's regions or provinces (states, for the U.S.) are safer than others. So then we look at the states, and we find that some counties are safer than others. And then within each county, some municipalities are safer than others. Within each municipality, some neighborhoods are safer than others, and then some blocks within each neighborhood are safer than others, until we get down to "my building is safer than your building."

The bottom line is that blocks, streets, and neighborhoods don't have their own governments. In the U.S., the smallest/lowest level of public government is typically the city/town. Therefore, regardless of whether 90 percent of the violence is confined to 10 percent of the geographic area within a municipality ... it's still under the purview of the municipal government, so IMHO they own it.

This illustrates one of the difficulties of gun control as an issue. A national gov't looks at the issue of "gun deaths*" on a macro and sees how many total people are killed each year. Presidential candidates have to discuss the Umpteen-Thousand people who are killed each year because they have to pander to a national audience. And national policies are created on a national scale. But sometimes they don't work on smaller scales. City to city, or building to building. Governments care how many people die. Individuals care which ones.

* =Yes, I know. Not really any better or worse than other deaths.