The Surprising Geography of Gun Violence

[JohnHurt]

Look at Portland, OR. Crime is rampant, and the city center is boarded up from all of the violence, and Portland is filled with homeless people on the street. Eastern Oregon is trying to secede, for good reason. Same with San Francisco, once a beautiful city, now ruined.

I think you watch too much FOX news. There are more boarded up business districts in rural and Eastern Oregon than there are in Portland. And crime is an issue everywhere. Here is a violent crime map for Oregon for 2022



And here is violent crime and property crime rate comparison between Portland and some other cities in rural and eastern Oregon that are completely run by Republicans at the city and county level. And note, this is for Portland only and not any of the Portland-area suburbs which are all blue and all have far lower crime rates than much of rural Oregon.

So the violent crime rate in Oregon is "average" compared to the rest of the USA, but the property crimes in Oregon are off the charts.

To me, that indicates that Oregon has a homeless problem. Homeless people are not always violent, but they have to steal to live. The same as the lower class has to steal to get by.

The middle class (that doesn't steal as much) apparently has been squeezed out of Oregon by the high tax rates.

Yet you have very wealthy people that live in Oregon, Washington state, and California, and most of them pay very little taxes.

This is the fruit of Socialism. It destroys the middle class and puts them into poverty, and makes the upper class very, very rich.

And there can be no middle class when the Socialists destroy the businesses where a middle class person might work. They destroy small businesses through endless taxation and regulation, and they are now destroying the large corporations by defunding the police.

Here is a list of businesses that have left Portland Oregon:

https://www.kgw.com/article/money/busin ... 60395a1bf6

Starbucks
Cracker Barrel
Walmart
Nike
REI
Target
plus innumerable "Mom and Pop" shops.

That is why you have a 70-80% property crime rate in Oregon. It is Socialism and all of the stupid "government assistance" programs that have taxed the middle class out of existence and made Oregon into a place people leave.

Yet everyone is trying to move to Tennessee, even with all of the supposed "gun violence". Why is that? Could it be the tax rate?

Well, they are not moving to downtown Memphis or Nashville, two cities run by Democrats and awash with violence and high taxes. They are not moving to areas where liberals are afraid to have guns in their homes - "the wealthy areas" - because these middle class people from Oregon can't afford a gated community.

They are moving to rural Tennessee where everyone has a gun, and no locks their doors. I know, I live here, and I now have 3 neighbors from California that have moved here to get away from the "Left Coast" insanity.

And they move here because Tennessee has a low tax rate, no State Income tax, and fully functioning police protection.

Most of all, they move to Tennessee because it is safe to live here, because everyone has a gun. Criminals only attack the defenseless.

You can be non-violent and live in an area where everyone is armed, and you can be very, very safe.

Take care, and keep your doors and windows locked. And be sure to call the police when someone breaks in. I am sure the police will be there in a couple of hours, if they haven't been defunded.

[Josh]

Watch out, John. Lots of locusts are moving to Tennessee who plan to vote for leftist policies once they get there. They pick a state based on "no income tax", then immediately start voting for exactly the kind of policies that destroyed the place they left. Like the locust, once they've destroyed your state, they'll find a new place to move on to. They're wealthy, so they can afford to.

Florida and TX have the exact same problem. Ironically, being a "red state" that also has rather progressive taxes is a good defence against keeping these carpetbaggers out. Ohio isn't even on the radar for these types of people, and I'm thankful: we don't need them moving here driving up property values to the point no one can afford a place to live, setting up NGOs and nonprofits to stop the police and social workers from keeping homeless people from sleeping on the sidewalks, and agitating to make drugs illegal (although we just endured a decade-long George Soros-funded operation to make legal marijuana in this state, as if we need more drug-addled people around here).

[JohnHurt]

Watch out, John. Lots of locusts are moving to Tennessee who plan to vote for leftist policies once they get there. They pick a state based on "no income tax", then immediately start voting for exactly the kind of policies that destroyed the place they left. Like the locust, once they've destroyed your state, they'll find a new place to move on to. They're wealthy, so they can afford to.

Florida and TX have the exact same problem. Ironically, being a "red state" that also has rather progressive taxes is a good defence against keeping these carpetbaggers out. Ohio isn't even on the radar for these types of people, and I'm thankful: we don't need them moving here driving up property values to the point no one can afford a place to live, setting up NGOs and nonprofits to stop the police and social workers from keeping homeless people from sleeping on the sidewalks, and agitating to make drugs illegal (although we just endured a decade-long George Soros-funded operation to make legal marijuana in this state, as if we need more drug-addled people around here).

I understand these locusts have already started to destroy Texas.

One of my neighbors from California was stopped in CA at an Antifa roadblock. He got out of his car and yelled at them to get out of the way, and they swarmed his car. He is well over 6' tall, muscular and ex military. He also carries a gun. This incident really scared him because if the Antifa people had attacked him, he would have killed 5 or 6 of them in response, and would go to jail forever for defending himself. So he left CA for TN, and he is a great neighbor to have, no problems at all. He just wants to be left alone.

The second neighbor from California is a older lady that has told several people she believes in vampires and that she has seen humans actually drinking blood. She is some sort of a witch or Satan worshipper. Her daughter is living nearby with her boyfriend, and they have two illegitimate children in the public school. The daughter has made a ruckus at the school with the teachers, and they cross swords with just about everyone.

A lot of mischief has happened since they arrived. One of my sheep dog puppies disappeared, and I found out that the older lady was deliberately feeding it. She lives two miles away, so I couldn't find my dog, even though my telephone number was on the collar.

Then someone shot a cow across the street from the older lady's home. 3 more of my sheep dogs smelled the rotting cow and went to take part. When the older lady saw my dogs, she started feeding them too. Finally she runs out of dog food, calls me that my dogs are on her property, and hits me up for "$100 in dog food" that she spent on them. I refuse to pay her, and take my dogs home.

A week or two later, some of my dogs go over to her property, she feeds them, and then calls me. I tell her to never feed my dogs again. The next time, she feeds my dogs, and files a complaint and we go to court. I tell the judge advocate what happened, that she is deliberately baiting my dogs, and that she has a dog that runs free too. So she drops the charges, but wastes my day. I had to take all 4 dogs to the pound to stop this nonsense (where they were euthanized), and start over with two new sheep dog pups, plus an older dog that never went to her house. I have around 65 sheep now, and need the dogs for protection, and no, you can't keep them inside a woven wire fence.

This story has gotten out, not by me, but people I don't even know stop me to ask me about it.

I am turning the other cheek on all of this, I just avoid them. And I am trying not to hold a grudge or anything.

But there are some "unstable" people living with PTSD that live out here, and if these new people were to pull these California shenanigans on them, it would start a feud like the Hatfields and McCoys. A large and powerful family on my road has already run a new family out of their home - just by making their life a living hell - calling the law on them repeatedly, and a lot of other things.

I have learned that there is a great "cultural difference" between living in the city and out here. There are family clans out here, and you had better be polite to everyone if you want to live here. Since my family is not from these parts, these new California people could hassle me and get away with it. But they won't last long out here. They will cross paths with someone unstable that is related to the judge and sheriff, and they will be on the receiving end of something unpleasant.

Yes, setting up a progressive tax could scare them away, but they would elect politicians to give themselves loopholes.

Have you ever noticed how these liberals want to set up Home Owners Associations? Something about having power over other people to make them do what you want - that is a driving force behind liberalism. That and worshiping the State as their "god". And believing everything the media says is true - as liberals can't seem to verify reality. I think it is some sort of brain virus.

[Josh]

City people who move into rural areas are interesting. They tend to think they have a "right" to do whatever they want with other people's animals, and don't understand that leaving food out or feeding stray animals makes everything harder for everyone else.

I used to have a neighbour who had four "rescue horses" and then later acquired a "rescue goat". She decided my cats needed rescuing, and started letting them in her house and feeding them. Her doing this made it difficult for me to keep them in my back yard. They now felt at liberty to either be in our yard, or to cross the street and go inside at their house. She refused to stop doing this.

I gave up after a while and decided she can just keep them - 3 cats. Her boyfriend didn't really want 3 extra cats, since he already has his own cat, and she already had 2 indoor cats. But eventually she wore him down. He called me up and offered to pay for them... they were just kittens I got for free, so I didn't really feel right accepting any money.

What is interesting is that so many people who refuse to follow the well established social norms in a place like rural Tennessee keep on moving there. And if you ask them, they'll cite "cost of living" or "high taxes". And then, yes, they'll suddenly want to establish a local government or homeowners' association because they want to run everyone else's lives, as if the place they moved to didn't already have a functioning local government.

[RZehr]

Oregon (despite whatever other problems are present) initiated a farmland protection law 50 years ago.

Today, if you buy land (at least in my county) that is in the country, and if you build a house in the country, you have to sign a legal statement that is essentially agreeing that you are aware that actual farming happens in farmland and that it takes precedence. It lists things like tractor and implement on the road; dust; chemicals and fertilizer; the smell of manure from barns and pens and spread on fields; farm machinery noise and lights at night; livestock noises and perhaps getting out; etc.
And this agreement is notarized and recorded.

Sounds like other states should do the same thing.

[Ken]

Wow John.

This is a thread about gun violence and you are going on a diatribe about Portland and Oregon? Have you ever even been to Oregon or you just watch Fox News? Just out of curiosity, let's see how the four largest cities in Oregon compare to the four largest cities in TN on violent crime, and property crime and to the national averages. Rather than do a city by city comparison I'll dump them all into one graph:

Oh....

Looks like TN is 3x more violent than Oregon and has higher property crime rates as well.



What about murders and gun deaths? The actual subject of this thread. We can compare TN and OR on those scores and for good measure toss in my state of WA and Josh's state of OH just for kicks

Oh....looks like all those guns aren't actually keeping TN more safe



But maybe all that red state governance is bringing more prosperity to TN and maybe that makes it worth living in such a violent place. Let's check.

Oh...I guess not. But at least you are doing slightly better than Mississippi.



But hey, you do have lots of Cracker Barrels so there's that.

[Ken]

Have you ever noticed how these liberals want to set up Home Owners Associations? Something about having power over other people to make them do what you want - that is a driving force behind liberalism. That and worshiping the State as their "god". And believing everything the media says is true - as liberals can't seem to verify reality. I think it is some sort of brain virus.

Ha ha ha ha....this is just too funny to let pass.

Do you know what state has by far the highest percentage of homes governed by HOAs?

Wait for it....

The cobalt blue state of Florida. Governed by famous liberal Ron DeSantis and his veto-proof Republican majority. It appears that his "war on wokeness" has missed the HOAs.

And having lived in Texas I suspect it is not far behind.

[JohnHurt]

Have you ever noticed how these liberals want to set up Home Owners Associations? Something about having power over other people to make them do what you want - that is a driving force behind liberalism. That and worshiping the State as their "god". And believing everything the media says is true - as liberals can't seem to verify reality. I think it is some sort of brain virus.

Ha ha ha ha....this is just too funny to let pass.

Do you know what state has by far the highest percentage of homes governed by HOAs?

Wait for it....

The cobalt blue state of Florida. Governed by famous liberal Ron DeSantis and his veto-proof Republican majority. It appears that his "war on wokeness" has missed the HOAs.

And having lived in Texas I suspect it is not far behind.

Yes, there are liberals in Florida, and they run the HOAs there. Broward and Palm Beach Counties are full of liberals and HOAs.

And Florida has not always been a blue state. Remember in the 2000 Presidential Election when Florida was the state that decided whether Gore or Bush would be president - with just a handful of ballots?

Remember that Florida used punched cards to count the vote for President in Florida in 2000? And some of the cards had "chads" or pieces of paper that should have been knocked out of the holes in the punched cards by the voting machine. These "chads" were still attached to the ballots, and the vote counters could not understand how it happened. Was it the voting machine, or something else?

Remember "hanging chads", "pregnant chads", etc.?

https://opinionfront.com/hanging-chad-c ... ion-of2000

Here is the reason for the chads in the punched card ballots.

They caught a Democratic staffer in Broward County with a trunk load of ballots. He was stacking the ballots on top of each other and using a stiff piece of wire to run through the stack of punch cards to indicate the ballots were votes for Gore. He was in a hurry, so the cards at the bottom of the stack ended with only slight perforations, or "pregnant chads, hanging chads, etc." as the wire did not knock the chad completely out of the punch card, like the voting machine would do.

To cover up the crime, the Democrats got a panel of several people to handle and visually inspect each of the punch cards to see if it was really a vote or "hanging chad", or not a vote or "pregnant chad". By doing this, they made sure that many different finger prints were on the punch cards, and not just the fingerprints of the Democratic staffer that caused the problem in the first place. So the crime could never be investigated.

Some things never change, like Democrats stealing elections. But it didn't work in the 2000 Presidential race. Not that Bush is better than Gore, but Al Gore is so completely incompetent, that the people of Tennessee, his home state where I live, rejected him as President. If Gore had won Tennessee in the 2000 Presidential Election, he would have had the electoral votes to be President without Florida.

I live near Carthage TN, and we know all about the Gores, and how they became rich through Armand Hammer.

We all had bumper stickers like "Gore Free Tennessee" back then. Gore flunked out of Divinity School (how is that even possible?) Al Gore has an IQ, maybe around 110. George W. Bush is no brain surgeon either. I doubt either one of them could write their own speeches.

So who is writing the speeches for Biden? He is too inept to tie his own shoes. Who is actually running the United States of America? Any ideas?

But yes, there are liberal Democrat "retirees" in Broward and Palm Beach counties of Florida, and there is a massive amount of HOAs there. And that is where the voter fraud happens too.

I am surprised that DeSantis ever got elected there. Like Bush, DeSantis went to Yale, so who knows what Ron really is.

And yes, if you want your life ruled by some old liberal that has lived off your tax money all of his life, and can't produce anything of real and lasting value - somebody who thinks they are "making money" by raising the fees on everyone in the HOA - someone that "gets excited" about telling you to keep your lawn cut to no more than 1" in height or they will give you a "ticket" - then move to Broward County and join a community with an HOA.

[JohnHurt]

Wow John.

This is a thread about gun violence and you are going on a diatribe about Portland and Oregon? Have you ever even been to Oregon or you just watch Fox News? Just out of curiosity, let's see how the four largest cities in Oregon compare to the four largest cities in TN on violent crime, and property crime and to the national averages. Rather than do a city by city comparison I'll dump them all into one graph:

Oh....

Looks like TN is 3x more violent than Oregon and has higher property crime rates as well.



What about murders and gun deaths? The actual subject of this thread. We can compare TN and OR on those scores and for good measure toss in my state of WA and Josh's state of OH just for kicks

Oh....looks like all those guns aren't actually keeping TN more safe



But maybe all that red state governance is bringing more prosperity to TN and maybe that makes it worth living in such a violent place. Let's check.

Oh...I guess not. But at least you are doing slightly better than Mississippi.



But hey, you do have lots of Cracker Barrels so there's that.

Why are people leaving Oregon and the "Left Coast"?
Why are people moving to Tennessee and conservative states?
Because Socialism doesn't work. It creates these terrible cities full of homeless people.
https://www.statista.com/chart/12484/po ... ral-state/

And gun violence is not a real issue.
So, your premise that Gun Violence makes Tennessee a problem state - is not what everyone believes that is moving away from Oregon to a conservative state where they are safe.

Your statistics all come from the Biden Regime, the same one telling us that inflation is low. I just don't believe them.

I think people know what is going on, and are "voting with their feet" to get away from Socialism in Oregon. This is the same reason the Commies had to build the Berlin wall - to keep people from leaving Socialism.

And you are much, much safer in Tennessee than the Left Coast.

[Ken]

Why are people leaving Oregon and the "Left Coast"?
Why are people moving to Tennessee and conservative states?
Because Socialism doesn't work. It creates these terrible cities full of homeless people.
https://www.statista.com/chart/12484/po ... ral-state/

And gun violence is not a real issue.
So, your premise that Gun Violence makes Tennessee a problem state - is not what everyone believes that is moving away from Oregon to a conservative state where they are safe.

Your statistics all come from the Biden Regime, the same one telling us that inflation is low. I just don't believe them.

I think people know what is going on, and are "voting with their feet" to get away from Socialism in Oregon. This is the same reason the Commies had to build the Berlin wall - to keep people from leaving Socialism.

And you are much, much safer in Tennessee than the Left Coast.

So MY statistics on crime and gun violence from the FBI are unbelievable because they are from the Biden Administration, but YOUR statistics from the Census Bureau (which, wait for it.....is also part of the Biden Administration) are reliable?

Internal migration is a complex issue. I have a tremendous amount of extended family in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest and I suspect their migration patterns are pretty representative. But if you want a thoughtful answer I'll give it to you.

The biggest problem on the west coast is housing prices. People move where they can afford to live. And that has been driven by both conservative and liberal policies on the west coast. Some of the worst problems are caused by rich liberals who don't want to see increased housing densities in their neighborhoods and do anything and everything to block it. Until that issue is dealt with, people will continue to leave because they can't find places to live, or don't want to devote 60% of their income to housing.

But migration patterns are also complicated. The Pacific Norwest is cold and rainy (at least on the west side) and a lot of elderly simply move when they retire. That is nothing new, it has been going on forever. But with an aging population it is becoming more acute. Numerous members of my extended family have left Oregon to retire in Arizona and Nevada where home prices are cheaper and the weather is warmer and drier. That is a common trend around here. People move to Nevada and Arizona. But guess what? Those are both now blue states at the state level. And also guess what? Violent crime rates are HIGHER in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno, Tempe, Tucson, than they are in the cities in the Pacific Northwest. So it isn't crime, it's cost of living and climate for the most part when we are talking about the elderly.

Young people are a different story. Young people and families are mostly moving to the suburbs within the Pacific Northwest from both rural areas, and inner city areas but for different reasons. The suburbs around Portland and Seattle are growing like crazy. I live in Washington but it is functionally a suburb of Portland and there is construction going on like crazy up here. New apartments, new houses, new office complexes, new high-tech companies, etc. etc. I see lots of Oregon plates up here. Young people are moving from rural Oregon to find jobs, and from inner-city Portland to find cheaper housing and better schools. Because Washington does a significantly better job of funding its schools and there is less dysfunction compared to Portland Public Schools. Which yes, is dysfunctional but not for the reasons you think. It has more to do with absolute stupid decisions like this where they are planning to ship students 11 miles away for 3 years while they build a new HS when a perfectly good community college has adequate space next door: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/08/25/ ... -students/

Internally the patterns are also clear. In both OR and WA, young people and people in general are moving AWAY from the red rural areas for a whole lot of reasons (mostly economic and cultural) and are moving towards the fast-growing suburbs of the blue cities of Portland and Seattle. They aren't moving all the way into the central cities but that is largely a function of housing costs: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2316 ... 0984_zpid/ and not crime.

In my own large extended family which now numbers close to 100, we see some elderly moving from Oregon to Arizona and Nevada for sun and lower cost of living. And we see the younger generation doing the opposite and moving towards the Seattle suburbs where there are more jobs despite the higher cost of living. I now have more relatives my age and younger in the greater Seattle area than Oregon. Some have also moved on to other tech centers like Northern Virginia, Boston, and Southern California. None to Tennessee.

The Pandemic was also problematic for central cities as so many companies shifted to work from home policies that let employees live anywhere. My oldest daughter is an example. She lives in Bend and works for a media company out of Los Angeles. Her boyfriend lives in Bend and works in the marketing department of a Portland-based snowboard and outdoor apparel company. That trend more than crime is responsible for emptying out central cities. It is turning around. Seattle is experiencing a flood of new workers moving back into the central city. Portland is slower but the vacancy rates are dropping.

None of that means that crime, homelessness, and addiction are not problems. Of course they are. But they are problems that cross political boundaries. Red states are not safter than blue states because they have more guns. The opposite is actually true. Violent crime tends to be higher in red states with lax gun laws. And the opioid addiction problem also knows no state boundaries. For example, Appalachia (TN, KY, WV, and OH) has MUCH higher opioid addiction and overdose death rates than the west coast states of OR, WA, and CA. Why is the opioid addiction rate and overdose death rate twice as high in TN as it is on the west coast? And why is it higher still in KY and WV?

Every state has its own unique set of challenges. Some are doing better than others at dealing with them. I would argue that comparing the equally blue states of OR and WA, that WA is doing a whole lot better on a lot of metrics which is why so many young people in my extended family are drifting north over time. There is just more opportunity. My wife and I made the same decision. Or rather, when we moved back to the Pacific Northwest from Texas we chose WA and not OR. We can probably make similar comparisons of say OH, PA, and NY. Or MS, AL, and GA. Why, for example, is GA doing so much better than MS and AL?