Gun Purchases, Citizen App and other thoughts

In the past couple of weeks I stumbled across a few articles via NY Times or links in newsletters that I receive. The first was:

An Arms Race in America: Gun Buying Spiked During the Pandemic. It’s Still Up.

And the second:

'FIND THIS FUCK:' Inside Citizen’s Dangerous Effort to Cash In On Vigilantism

The first article from NYT has been covered by several other outlets, including NPR but the gist is that there are lots of first time gun buyers recently and against the popular narrative, there are a very significant fraction that are Democrats, women, minorities, etc. Essentially, gun ownership is getting somewhat more representative of US demographics.

The second article was about an app that I've never heard of - Citizen. I've read articles in the past years about the role of sites like Nextdoor in racial profiling as it pertains to property crime in neighborhoods as well as a few about the implications of ubiquity of Ring doorbells to create a nightmarish residential panopticon. It was a fascinating, disturbing and not entirely balanced read which is on-brand with what I expect from Vice.

At the core of these articles though seems to be a recognition or, at least, a belief held by a reasonable cross-section of urban/suburban citizens that they are essentially on their own when it comes to dealing with property crime. In several west coast cities - LA, Portland and Seattle are obvious choices - the justice system is virtually non-existent when it comes to prosecuting property crimes. The reasons vary but are usually related to the belief that the criminals are the victims of society's ills and thus should not be prosecuted and jailed. This ultimately translates to the police not really bothering to respond to reports of property crimes because they know that any work they put into the case will be wasted by the prosecutor's office. This in turn, leads citizens to stop (or at least reduce) reporting of property crime because they have been told by their friends that the police basically told them there was nothing they could do, if the police responded at all. Then it all comes full circle as the fall in crime statistics allow the policy makers and activists to pretend all is well and that they are doing a great job. Meanwhile, the average home owner knows a couple of people who have had their catalytic converters sawed off and another few people who have been burgled.

When the state nearly abdicates it's role as the monopolizer of force (via the criminal justice system), but citizens still have an expectation of order then you end up with people deciding that maybe a gun makes sense. Or maybe my area needs the old Neighborhood Watch on technological steroids. Or a hanging posse.

It seems that some parts of the country are at a crossroads. One path, the State can go back to prosecuting property crimes as the laws allows and most people wish. On the other path, we go the way of South Africa and areas like Johannesburg in which houses are miniature fortresses, private security replaces police with even fewer restraints, and extra-judicial "prosecution" in varying forms occurs.

There are more ideas about what I believe are the three tiers of citizens in the legal system but those will be in another post... sometime.