Replies to post #285785 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[hookrider]

BOREALIS: Damn that just breaks my heart.

[PegnVA]

The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist’ - So sad.

[Dale C]

They've lived past their allotted time it's ok for them to go now.

[BOREALIS]

Did Alleged Russian Spy Maria Butina Cause a Leadership Shake-up at the NRA?

Weeks after the feds raided Butina’s apartment, the gun group’s president made a hasty exit.

David Corn Aug. 3, 2018 7:54 AM

On May 7, the National Rifle Association released a curious press release declaring that Oliver North, the key player in the Iran-contra scandal and an NRA board member, was “poised to become” the group’s president. Earlier that day, Peter Brownell, then finishing his first term as NRA president, had announced that he would not seek a second annual term in order to devote more time to his family business, a firearms retail company.

This changing of the guard—and how it happened—was odd. For fifteen years, the NRA leadership had followed a specific pattern: an officer was elected by the board to serve two consecutive annual terms as second vice president, then two as first vice president, and, finally, two as president. But the Brownell-to-North transition broke this orderly process. North at the time was serving in neither vice president position. And his ascension was a surprise—even to North. The day of the move, North told NRATV, “I didn’t expect this to be happening…This was very sudden.” (North also remarked, “A coup is being worked against the president of the United States and every conservative organization on the planet.”)

This development puzzled NRA watchers. North had not been in the line of succession. He was not prepared for the position and said he would need weeks before he could assume the post. Brownell was the first NRA president in a decade and a half not to seek a second term, and the first vice president, Richard Childress, was passed over. Childress claimed that because of his own commitments he could not even serve as interim president. That job went to the second vice president, Carolyn Meadows. The NRA had been known as an outfit with a strict hierarchy. But now all that was being thrown aside in what North called an “unexpected” and “sudden” action.

What wasn’t publicly known at the time was that on April 25—two weeks before this seemingly hasty NRA leadership makeover—FBI agents in tactical gear raided the apartment of Maria Butina, a 29-year-old Russian who three months later would be charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly serving as a secret agent for the Russian government in the United States. For years, Butina and her mentor, Alexander Torshin, a Russian official tied to Vladimir Putin, had hooked up with the NRA and other conservative groups, allegedly as part of what the Justice Department called a covert influence operation. Butina, who ran a gun rights group in Russia, and Torshin, who has been accused of money laundering (a charge he denies), had attended NRA events and other right-wing get-togethers, and during the 2016 campaign used their NRA contacts to try to arrange a meeting between Putin and Donald Trump. (It didn’t happen.) During this operation, according to prosecutors, Butina relied upon the assistance of conservative consultant Paul Erickson, her romantic partner and an active NRA member.

Did the FBI investigation of Butina lead to Brownell’s quick retreat from the NRA leadership? The NRA did not respond to a request for comment. And neither did Brownell. “He’s not taking calls,” the receptionist at his company says.

Brownell did have history with Butina. In 2015, she organized a trip to Russia for an NRA delegation that included Brownell, top NRA donor Joe Gregory, and David Clarke, then the Milwaukee County sheriff. During that jaunt, the NRAers met with Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister, who had been sanctioned by the Obama administration in 2014 in retaliation for Putin’s intervention in Ukraine. Rogozin led the ultra-right party Rodina, and his government portfolio included a matter of particular interest to this delegation: the arms industry. He had the task of overseeing Russia’s military-industrial complex and rejuvenating the nation’s weapons-making business.

While Brownell, then the NRA’s first vice president, and his NRA colleagues were in Moscow, they visited the headquarters of ORSIS, a private arms manufacturer. Accompanied by Butina, they watched a video extolling the ORSIS T-5000, a highly accurate sniper rifle that had been identified by the Pentagon as a threat to American troops. They toured the company’s manufacturing plant and observed rifles being made. They also test-fired ORSIS rifles at an on-site shooting range. The firm presented the NRA group with watches bearing the company’s logo. Weeks later, the company produced a promotional video showing the NRA delegates gushing over the T-5000. The video was posted on YouTube. That is, Brownell and the others, who had been escorted to the ORSIS offices by Butina, were helping ORSIS sell a rifle that worried US military planners.

During that visit, Brownell and the NRA delegation met Svetlana Nikolaeva, the president of the parent company of ORSIS. (She appears in that promotional video with the NRA crew.) In what was likely not a coincidence, Nikolaeva’s oligarch husband, Konstantin Nikolaev, provided financial support to Butina, according to private testimony Butina gave to Senate investigators this year before she was charged. (One document filed by federal prosecutors maintains that Butina has “ties to the Russian oligarchy.”)

The Butina case has been an embarrassment for the NRA, which has yet to comment on it, and, more important, it has raised questions about interactions between the gun lobby and Russia, including the possibility of Russian sources funneling money to the NRA. (According to a BuzzFeed report, Butina and Erickson engaged in financial transactions totaling nearly $300,000 that were flagged by banking investigators as suspicious.) A previous NRA president, David Keene, who was part of that delegation to Russia, enthusiastically pledged his assistance to Butina and her Russian organization. And Brownell was smack-dab in the middle of the NRA-Butina connection.

If Brownwell’s departure as top gun at the NRA was not related to the Butina case, then the gun lobby was quite fortunate he was gone by the time this scandal exploded.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/did-alleged-russian-spy-maria-butina-cause-a-leadership-shake-up-at-the-nra-1/

[fuagf]

BOREALIS, hahaha, it was top news to start the day with (then got sidetracked). The stuff about Oliver
North upsetting the N.R.A's traditional succession (in your reply to yours) path was very interesting.
It's good to see their decades long 2nd Amendment fraud may be finally catching up to them, but
guess North isn't the guy to take them back to their more positive roots. You know the history

The NRA supported gun control laws until 1977. What good safety reason do you think changed
their mind? Not one. Some reading for you. The first one is key if you haven't seen one like it yet.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=138596687

[fuagf]

The NRA’s financial weakness, explained

"The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist’"

December 14, 2018 10.46pm AEDT

The National Rifle Association’s political spending fell during the 2018 midterm elections. There’s talk of ending small perks like free coffee at its offices and even employee layoffs.

These and other trends indicate that at a time when the NRA’s clout may seem stronger than ever, its financial power may be faltering.

As a researcher who studies and tracks the finances of nonprofits, I have followed the NRA’s financial disclosures for years. Here’s what I’ve observed lately.

A negative nest egg

[...]

Throwing away its shot?

Another revenue source – fees earned from insurance products NRA members buy – is being threatened due to efforts by New York state to block the group from marketing firearm liability coverage. These fees, which accounted for more than $14 million in revenue in 2017, would be hard to replace.

In sum, though the NRA’s financial situation does not strike me as immediately dire based on the information available, it is far from healthy.

And while details about the NRA’s wobbly balance sheet are surely less salacious than other news about the gun group, such as allegations and reports that it may have been a conduit for Russia to influence the Republican Party, a weak financial footing may ultimately be what saps its political power.

With links - https://theconversation.com/the-nras-financial-weakness-explained-108582

[fuagf]

New York Attorney General Sues N.R.A. and Seeks Its Closure

"The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist’
A new legal filing by the powerful gun group against the state of New York paints a grim picture
August 3, 2018 11:10AM ET "

Video - N.Y. Attorney General Sues to Dissolve N.R.A. Over Corruption By Reuters
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, alleged that years of corruption by National Rifle
Association executives undermined its ability to operate as a nonprofit. Mike Segar/Reuters

By Danny Hakim

Aug. 6, 2020

New York’s attorney general issued an existential challenge to the National Rifle Association on Thursday, arguing in a lawsuit that years of runaway corruption and misspending demanded the dissolution of the nation’s most powerful gun rights lobby.

While the legal confrontation could take years to play out, it constitutes yet another deep blow to an organization whose legendary political clout has been diminished by infighting and financial distress.

The suit was swiftly followed by two others: The N.R.A. struck back with a federal lawsuit against the office of the attorney general, Letitia James, claiming her action was politically motivated and violated the organization’s First Amendment rights. And the attorney general of Washington, D.C., filed suit against the N.R.A. and its charitable foundation, alleging that the N.R.A. misused millions of dollars of the foundation’s funds.

Ms. James — who has special jurisdiction over the N.R.A. because it was chartered as a nonprofit in New York 148 years ago — also sued four current or former N.R.A. leaders, seeking tens of millions of dollars in restitution. In addition to Wayne LaPierre, the longtime chief executive, they are John Frazer, the organization’s general counsel; Josh Powell, a former top lieutenant of Mr. LaPierre; and Wilson Phillips, a former chief financial officer.

While allegations of mismanagement and lavish spending by Mr. LaPierre and others have emerged from the N.R.A.’s internecine warfare over the last year, the New York suit lays out a broad litany of new allegations of corruption and greed from executives who Ms. James said “looted” the N.R.A.

Mr. LaPierre is accused of raiding N.R.A. funds to bankroll an extravagant lifestyle, even though he was already paid millions in direct compensation by the organization.

Over six and a half years, the suit said, a personal travel consultant for Mr. LaPierre was paid $13.5 million, largely on no-bid contracts. Private flights were chartered for Mr. LaPierre’s wife and his niece. He took frequent trips to the Bahamas on the N.R.A.’s dime, often decamping to a 108-foot yacht called “Illusions” that was owned by an N.R.A. contractor and included a chef and four staterooms. He lavished gifts from Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman on his inner circle, and once put his niece up at a Four Seasons hotel for eight nights at a cost of more than $12,000, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit accuses the N.R.A. and the executives of “violating numerous state and federal laws” by enriching themselves, as well as their friends, families and allies, and taking improper actions that cost the organization $64 million over three years. Ms. James is also seeking to oust Mr. LaPierre and Mr. Frazer, and to bar all four men from serving on nonprofit boards in New York again.

The lawsuit, which was filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, is a civil action, and it outlined a number of alleged tax violations. Ms. James said during a news conference that she was referring the matter to the Internal Revenue Service in addition to taking her own action, and did not rule out making a future criminal referral.

"It’s an ongoing investigation,” she said. “If we uncover any criminal activity, we will refer it to the Manhattan district attorney. At this point in time we’re moving forward, again, with civil enforcement.”

In a statement, Mr. LaPierre said: “This is an unconstitutional, premeditated attack aiming to dismantle and destroy the N.R.A. — the fiercest defender of America’s freedom at the ballot box for decades. We’re ready for the fight. Bring it on.”

President Trump, in comments Thursday .. https://tinyurl.com/yxf7vcye , said, “That’s a very terrible thing that just happened,” adding that “the N.R.A. should move to Texas and lead a very good and beautiful life.”

The N.R.A., however, cannot move its assets to another state amid the investigation, and even if it is dissolved, it would have to start over largely from scratch.

N.R.A. officials have denounced Ms. James, a Democrat, since she referred to the group as a “terrorist organization .. https://www.ebony.com/news/letitia-tish-james-on-becoming-new-yorks-next-attorney-general/ ” during her 2018 campaign and vowed to investigate it. As they have often done when under attack in the past, the N.R.A. officials are likely to step up their fund-raising efforts by stoking anger about the investigation among their more than five million members.

“You could have set your watch by it: the investigation was going to reach its crescendo as we move into the 2020 election cycle,” the N.R.A.’s president, Carolyn Meadows, said in a statement.

She also called the inquiry “a power grab by a political opportunist” and said “we not only will not shrink from this fight — we will confront it and prevail.”

The attorney general’s office previously presided over the dissolution of President Trump’s scandal-marred charitable foundation, but the N.R.A. is a far larger organization that is expected to put up a more prolonged fight.

The N.R.A. has long wielded immense power in the nation’s politics. But amid its deepening troubles, it has taken an unusually low profile during this election season, though it said Thursday .. https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/exclusive-nra-plans-to-spend-tens-of-millions-in-battleground-states/ .. that it would spend tens of millions of dollars this year in battleground states.

Its finances have been strained by internal strife costing tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, including a messy divorce from Ackerman McQueen, the advertising and strategy firm that was its most important contractor for decades.

The organization’s finances have also been badly damaged by the pandemic, which forced it to cancel its annual convention and a number of fund-raising events. And it has faced a revolt from some donors, who disagree with Ms. James’s politics but would also like to oust Mr. LaPierre and his team.

Ms. James’s lawsuit is the culmination of an inquiry that began in February 2019 and played out amid revelations in the news media regarding the organization’s spending and governance practices.

Among the numerous alleged violations laid out by Ms. James’s office, some were related to false reporting of annual filings both to the state and the I.R.S. Her office also cited “improper expense documentation, improper wage reporting, improper income tax withholding” and failing to make required excise tax reporting and payment, among other issues.

Mr. LaPierre is also said to have secured a post-employment contract without board approval worth more than $17 million.

There were allegations of incompetence as well. Mr. LaPierre hired a convicted embezzler as a personal assistant who, according to the complaint, went on to be repeatedly accused of using N.R.A. funds for her own expenses. Mr. Frazer, the general counsel, was described as overmatched by his job; he had only 18 months in private practice, and no corporate legal experience. Mr. Frazer did not comment.

Mr. Phillips, the former treasurer and chief financial officer, presided for years with Mr. LaPierre over the N.R.A.’s governance practices. He failed to disclose a personal relationship he had with the chief executive of a company paid $1.4 million by the N.R.A., and after his retirement was paid $30,000 a month for consulting work he did not perform, according to the complaint.

His lawyer, Mark Werbner, disputed the last point, saying Mr. Phillips “definitely did work as part of the consulting agreement,” but offered few specifics. Mr. Werbner added that Mr. Phillips “acted in good faith and is very surprised these transactions are being characterized differently.”

Like Mr. LaPierre, he made use of a contractor’s luxury yacht, though with a slightly different name — it was called “Grand Illusion.”

The lawsuit also claims that testimony by the chairman of the N.R.A.’s audit committee indicated that he had little awareness of its governance role and no knowledge of state law concerning such committees and was unfamiliar with the committee’s own charter, which states that it oversees the organization’s financial integrity.

N.R.A. officials have conducted their own internal audit and defended many of their practices, though several top officials have been forced out amid an internal dispute over how it is run, including Oliver North, its former president, and Christopher Cox, the former top lobbyist. Mr. North, a right-wing pundit, is referred to in the complaint as “Dissident No. 1,” and is said to be cooperating with the inquiry.

A number of accusations were leveled at Mr. Powell, a former top aide to Mr. LaPierre who was dismissed for allegedly misappropriating N.R.A. funds. The complaint says that a consulting firm called McKenna was hired by the N.R.A. to oversee “Project Ben-Hur .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frE9rXnaHpE ,” which aimed to restructure the organization and its banking relationships. The firm paid Mr. Powell’s wife $30,000 a month as an independent contractor, through a newly formed company called SPECTRE .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gi0VDZzjtQ , a conflict that Mr. Powell took steps to hide, according to the complaint.

In a statement, Mr. Powell’s lawyer said his client “was fired by Wayne LaPierre and the N.R.A.’s lawyers for his efforts to correct much of the misconduct cited in the attorney general’s complaint,” adding that “allegations directed at him in this lawsuit will be shown to be the result of false accusations made by Wayne LaPierre and others.”

Legal experts said that while Ms. James’s complaint was serious and exposed vast problems, dissolving the organization would face challenges in court.

Sean Delany, a former head of the charities bureau in the office of the attorney general — the same division now handling the case — said, “I think the facts are very strong, but I think the remedy of dissolution is a stretch, because the A.G. would have to prove that the organization is so rife with fraud that there isn’t anything sufficiently substantial in the organization’s charitable programs to make it worth saving.”

But David Samuels, a former deputy chief of the same bureau, said, “It appears that they have a strong case under New York law for dissolving the N.R.A.” New York’s law on conflicts of interest and related party transactions was tightened in 2013, he noted.

“The current lawsuit cites, in part, violations of these provisions designed to prevent misuse of charitable assets,” Mr. Samuels said.

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and John Ismay contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 7, 2020
, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: New York Sues N.R.A. in Bid To Dissolve It. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Related Coverage

Dec. 18, 2019 Inside Wayne LaPierre’s Battle for the N.R.A.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/magazine/wayne-lapierre-nra-guns.html

May 14, 2019 At the N.R.A., a Cash Machine Sputtering
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/nra-finances-executives-board-members.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/us/ny-nra-lawsuit-letitia-james.html

See also:

NRA faces probe that could cost it its nonprofit status
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=149914180

Trump Jr., Butina, and the N.R.A.’s Pete Brownell. Chuckle. Good photo.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=145393942

THE NRA IS IMPLODING. WE HAVE FANCY CLOTHES TO THANK FOR THAT.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148846371

There’s actually lots of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion
[...]
But some of it was quite high-level and explicitly about the campaign. Donald Trump Jr., for example, took a meeting with the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank .. https://themoscowproject.org/collusion/trump-jr-meets-kremlin-linked-banker-nra-convention/ .. while attending the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Kentucky in May 2016. The meeting was arranged by a US conservative activist named Paul Erickson, who got in touch with senior Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn to set it up .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/us/politics/trump-putin-russia-nra-campaign.html , explicitly as a step toward creating back-channel communications between Russia and the campaign.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152826738

Russia’s State TV Calls Trump Their ‘Agent’
THE SUNDAY SHOWS
Russian commentators note, rightly, that “sooner or later, the Democrats will come back into power," and they’re already joking about offering Trump asylum.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152822006

Ted Nugent’s Latest Racist Outburst Complicates the NRA’s Diversity Efforts
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=156299929

NRA drops lawsuit, accepts branding as a ‘domestic terrorist organization’ by San Francisco
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152180397

Pic Of The Moment: That NRA Logic
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=150947993

Trump told NRA’s Wayne LaPierre he’s not ‘waffling’ anymore — background checks are off the table
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=150649636

Trump accused of another quid pro quo, this time with New York
"He's holding New York state hostage to try to stop investigations into his prior tax fraud," tweeted Rep. Val Demings.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153822316

Donald Trump to pay $2 million to settle New York Attorney General civil lawsuit against Trump Foundation and his children
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152155112

The A to Z of Things Trump Could and Should Have Been Impeached For
[...]
FRAUD
The president of the United States is a fraudster. Don’t take my word for it. In November 2016, less than two weeks after he was elected, Trump settled three different fraud lawsuits related to his Trump University for $25 million. Earlier this month, as the New York Attorney General Letitia James formally announced .. https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2019/donald-j-trump-pays-court-ordered-2-million-illegally-using-trump-foundation , the president was “forced to pay $2 million for misusing charitable funds for his own political gain,” and his Trump Foundation was “shut down for its misconduct.” Trump isn’t fit to run a university or a charity, so how is he fit to run the country?
[...]
JARED
Trump demanded .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner-security-clearance.html .. that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be granted a security clearance, despite objections from intelligence officials who warned that Kushner could be compromised by his business ties to foreign governments. The president may have the right to give anyone a security clearance and yet, as House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler explained in March, “You can do things that are within your power that are abuses of power and that are crimes.”
[...]
LIES, LIES, AND LIES
Trump has told more than 15,000 falsehoods .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/16/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/ [that's much outdated, as you know] .. since coming to office. To quote presidential historian Douglas Brinkley: “There is no president that lied as if they were a form of breathing, except Donald Trump.” But lying isn’t an impeachable offense, right? Wrong. The very first article .. https://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment .. of impeachment against Nixon accused him of “making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States.”
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=156480163

[fuagf]

America doesn’t have more crime than other rich countries. It just has more guns.

"The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist’"

By Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp [e-mail] Updated Feb 15, 2018, 8:55am EST

Slightly aged yet still entirely relevant.

Wednesday's shooting in Florida .. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/14/17013596/parkland-florida-high-school-shooting , like so many mass murders before it, seems likely to raise a debate we've had many times before: Why does the US have such a high rate of gun murders, by far the highest in the developed world? Is it because of guns, or is there something else going on? Maybe America is just more prone to crime, say, because of income inequality or cultural differences?

A landmark 1997 study .. http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Is-Not-Problem-Violence/dp/0195131053?ots=1&slotNum=0&imprToken=b6b9f5c1-152c-5472-c83&tag=curbedcom06-20&linkCode=w50 .. actually tried to answer this question. Its findings — which scholars say still hold up — are that America doesn't really have a significantly higher rate of crime compared to similar countries. But that crime is much likelier to be lethal: American criminals just kill more people than do their counterparts in other developed countries. And guns appear to be a big part of what makes this difference.

Crime is not the problem


Javier Zarracina/Vox

The seminal work here is a 1999 book by Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, called Crime Is Not the Problem .. http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Is-Not-Problem-Violence/dp/0195131053?ots=1&slotNum=1&imprToken=b6b9f5c1-152c-5472-c83&tag=curbedcom06-20&linkCode=w50 . Zimring and Hawkins set out to examine what was, at the time, the conventional wisdom: that America had a uniquely terrible crime problem, one without any parallel in other developed democracies.

They found, pretty definitively, that the conventional wisdom was wrong. "Rates of common property crimes in the United States are comparable to those reported in many other Western industrial nations, but rates of lethal violence in the United States are much higher," they write. "Violence is not a crime problem."

Zimring and Hawkins determined this by looking at 20 developed countries' overall crime rate and rates of violent death. They found virtually no connection between the two, indicating that a country's level of violent death wasn't determined by its overall crime levels:

-
The lowest death rate country (England) has a crime rate just over average. The next lowest violence nation is Japan, which
has the lowest crime rate also. The third lowest death rate country is the Netherlands, in the highest crime rate group.
-

"This data set provides a multinational example of the central point that lethal violence is the crucial problem in the United States," Zimring and Hawkins write. "It shows the United States clustered with other industrial countries in crime rate, but head and shoulders above the rest in violent death."

Why does this happen? It's not because, as you might think, American violent criminals are just more likely to kill people. "Only a minority of Los Angeles homicides grow out of criminal encounters like robbery and rape," they find (there's no reason to believe the pattern would differ in other cities). So even if it could be shown that American robbery and rape rates are across-the-board higher than those in similar countries (which doesn't appear true today .. http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf ), that still wouldn't explain why America has so many more homicides than other countries.

Again, Zimring and Hawkins's LA data was revealing. "A far greater proportion of Los Angeles homicides grow out of arguments and other social encounters between acquaintances [than robbery or rape]," they find.

This is where guns enter the story. The mere presence of firearms, according to Zimring and Hawkins, makes a merely tense situation more likely to turn deadly. When a gang member argues with another gang member, or a robber sticks up a liquor store, there's always a risk that the situation can escalate to some kind of violence. But when people have a handheld tool that is specially engineered for killing efficiently, escalation to murder becomes much, much more likely.

And indeed, that's what Zimring and Hawkins's data found.

"A series of specific comparisons of the death rates from property crime and assault in New York City and London show how enormous differences in death risk can be explained even while general patterns are similar," they explain. "A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime fifty-four times as deadly in New York City as in London."

Guns, not criminality per se, are the problem.

Guns are still the problem today


Countries with more guns have more gun deaths. (Tewksbury Lab)

In a 2015 email to Vox, Zimring contended that Crime Is not the Problem's core argument remains true despite a significant international drop in overall crime rates since the book was published.

"There has been quite a bit of work on these issues in the 18 year[s] since the book was published," he wrote, "and it confirms the basic argument rather powerfully."

The data seems to support this. "Robbery and assault rates ... reveal several Western nations that rival the United States," a 2011 review .. https://tinyurl.com/y5bljm6s .. found. "While the level of lethal violence in the United States is probably the highest in the Western world, it is hard to make the case for US exceptionalism when it comes to non-lethal violence."

Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago's Crime Lab, called Zimring and Hawkins ..

Excellent source. https://t.co/LxHe81u428

— Harold Pollack (@haroldpollack) August 26, 2015

's book "an excellent source." In a 2015 phone interview, he pointed to a number of more recent studies that fit the pattern it identified.

"There's no question the United States faces a number of distinctive social policy challenges, some of which affect the crime rate. But many other OECD countries face their own distinctive problems that affect their crime rate," he told me. Western Europe, for example, has a major problem with drug use. Canadian cities have "very high" rates of property crime like car theft. And yet, the US still stands out on murders.

"I think that Americans have this view of Western Europe, or Toronto for that matter, which is very stereotypical and doesn't take into account the challenges that many of peer industrial democracy problems face," he points out. "There's a lot of drug sale, a lot of ethnic stratification and conflict, there's a lot of just general crime."

Pollack also shared Zimring and Hawkins's theory of the ease with which guns escalate conflict to violence, and thus heighten homicide rates. "Some of the behaviors that we think of as fundamentally linked with violence may stay quite steady as the violence rate goes down, as you get a better handle on the gun issue," he explained.

New York's recent tightening enforcement of gun laws serves as a good example. According to Pollack, New York didn't effectively reduce its heroin use rate or solve underlying problems such as poverty — the things that gun rights advocates often claim actually contribute to gun violence. But New York did tighten gun restrictions, which coincided with less violence.

"The proliferation of off-the-shelf handguns is really our problem," Pollack says. "If we regulated guns the way that England regulates guns, we would certainly have a much lower homicide rate."

https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe