Tyler Cowen is “confused that for the Left ‘guns’ are a big issue, but apparently ‘crime’ is not.” But there’s a simple explanation, which Steve Sailer provides:
“Guns” means white. “Crime” means black.
So you are supposed to constantly talk up the terrors of gun violence, but downplay crime.
In reality, “gun violence” isn’t some peculiarly white thing. Blacks are even more inclined toward homicides by gun than toward homicides in general. According to the Obama administration’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, the approximately 13% of the population that is black made up 52.5 percent of overall homicide offenders, but 56.9 percent of killers who used guns. So blacks on average are about 8.8 times more lethal with guns than is the rest of the population.
The main practical reason for why Democrats support gun control laws is in the hope of disarming black criminals. But white Democrats can’t come out and say that they want help from their fellow whites in keeping blacks under control. So they constantly lecture the rest of us that the true danger is those vicious rural straight white men with their hunting rifles.
Not surprisingly, this Democratic political strategy of insulting potential allies has proved less than all-conquering over the past 50 years. But Democrats would rather die than tell the truth about whom they actually fear.