Gun Control Group’s New Report Undercuts Their Own Agenda

A new report out by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence suggests that mistrust of police is a major driver of violent crime, and their conclusions don’t bode well for the types of gun control laws that Giffords and other groups want to impose on the American people.

From The Guardian:

In many American communities, acts of police brutality, over-enforcement targeting small infractions and high numbers of unsolved shootings and homicides have eroded trust, making residents less likely to place their trust in law enforcement and more likely to seek vigilante justice, the researchers note.

“Everybody has largely missed the fact that if people can’t count on help from the state and its agents, they’re going to take care of themselves,” says David Kennedy, the director of the National Network for Safe Communities, a violence reduction research center, whose work is referenced throughout the report. “Sometimes taking care of yourself looks like day-to-day gun violence.”

The claim by Giffords is nothing groundbreaking. In fact, Jill Leovy’s 2015 book Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder In America is a vivid portrayal of how that mistrust of police plays out in high crime neighborhoods in Los Angeles.