h/t New York Times
Birmingham, Ala., coming off a record year for homicides, tried a new solution to prevent gun violence: blocking off streets in trouble-prone (read minority) neighborhoods. But the New York Times reports that so far the measure is just making a bad situation worse.
“Struggling schools, high levels of poverty and unemployment have persisted in Birmingham in recent years, creating ripe conditions for violent crime,” the paper reports. “And other factors have hurt the city, residents and local officials said, including police staffing shortages and Alabama’s permissive gun laws. That forces Birmingham, a majority Black Democratic city of about 197,000 residents, to find alternative ways to reduce violence.”
Great read about the intersection of race, poverty, and state and local politics in the fight against gun violence.
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