Gun control advocates claim to want gun control because violent crime is such a problem. They figure that if the guns go away, so will so-called gun crime.
And, in theory, it might. The problem, though, is that guns aren't the cause of violent crime. All that will happen is that criminals will use something else to hurt people.
Instead, if you want to address crime, you have to get to the root of it.
Concealed and constitutional carry helps with the issue because it presents a threat to the criminals themselves, and after a few get shot, the others might decide that violent crime is a terrible idea.
The problem is that too many large blue cities and their elected officials tend to focus on the tools themselves, not the tools using them.
Detroit's mayor and police chief, strangely, have a plan that seems to flip that script a bit, but it's just not enough:
Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield and Police Chief Todd Bettison on Thursday unveiled a six-point "community safety plan" that stresses working with the community and employing strategies to reduce accidental gun deaths.
The plan of the first-term mayor is heavily focused on fostering relationships between the police and the city's young people, a continuation of the mayor's youth-oriented push since she took office in January. The city's homicides and violent crimes have been declining in recent years.
Two new initiatives included in the plan are the creation of Neighborhood Safety Action Teams to identify problems and a Conflict Resolution & Restorative Practices Task Force. The plan's other four components are a "DPD Safe Summer Strategy" that targets drag racing, drifting, block party compliance and crowd control; youth-centered activations; a gun storage and safety campaign; and after-hours engagement and enforcement.
"I've said many times that we can't arrest our way to a safe city," Sheffield said. "It is going to take a broad range of strategies that address not only criminal behavior but the circumstances that create the opportunity for it to occur."
You actually can arrest your way to a safe city, but that's not politically palatable to acknowledge. Still, these strategies, despite falling under the whole "restorative" justice label, aren't terrible. Going after drag racing and drifting means going after large gatherings where there's already a lack of respect for the law. Block party compliance, depending on what exactly they mean by that, could well reduce the possibility of gang-bangers showing up and shooting the entire block to pieces.
It's not enough to focus on a few specific places and to try to keep the youth busy with midnight basketball or whatever, though. There needs to be a certain amount of fear of stepping outside the lines as well.
Still, it's kind of nice to see the only mention of guns being gun storage and safety, though I'm sure there will be more than enough problematic details in that campaign. That, with the attempt at focusing on "criminal behavior but the circumstances that create the opportunity for it to occur," is a nice change of pace.
If only they'd dig deeper to do so.
