Its not like that actually. If you could read Italian you would understand that the area is extremely dangerous, anythnig can happen at any time. People get shot just by tresspassing, the people living in the area are desperate and the police does not care (probably bribed?). There are many corps found along syringes and so forth. Its not like a guy in college who sells pot in his dorm or something...
In some areas Athens is like that (e.g. Omonia Square at night).
> Its not like that actually. If you could read Italian you would understand that the area is extremely dangerous, anythnig can happen at any time. People get shot just by tresspassing, the people living in the area are desperate and the police does not care (probably bribed?). There are many corps found along syringes and so forth.
While it's obvious that the area is dangerous, where did you read that "People get shot just by trespassing"? Or, that "the police does not care (probably bribed?)"? Police in Rome is really on a budget (like almost everything in Italy). I wouldn't be surprised there was a single patrol at night that's assigned with that whole area (actually, I wouldn't be surprised the area assigned was much larger than that).
Edit: Procuratorate was (in 2003) not willing to investigate further after 150 arrests in 6 months. That's where you might suspect bribery.
From the page: "Parziale e incompleta mappa interattiva di ciò che ha prodotto al Pigneto il narcotraffico e l'inerzia degli amministratori. La testimonianza della loro vergogna e della nostra quotidiana umiliazione. Ma anche della nostra resistenza. Scriveteci per correzioni, segnalazioni e commenti."
Literally:
"Incomplete interactive map of what drug trafficking and inertia by the city administration has produced. A witness of what they should be ashamed of, and what is humiliating us daily, but also of our resistance. Write us for corrections, reports and comments."
What follows is a list of 'interesting' places. There are two death places in the map, one is labeled "Luogo di consumo e morte" = "Place of [drug] use and death", the other "Vittima del conflitto - nordafricano sgozzato alle otto di sera" = "Victim of the fight - [a] North African [illegal alien] slaughtered at eight pm" http://www.ilmessaggero.it/ROMA/CRONACA/pigneto_nordafricano...
Interesting, trying to do that in Safari gives an error (in Italian). Something about those URLs not being allowed. I'm guessing that Chrome does allow you to do this?
Consumption is already somewhat decriminalized in Italy. Legalization would have a much bigger effect, and it's what the author of this map is advocating to combat marginalization.
Italy makes some really good firearms, I'm a big fan of Beretta. Too bad only criminals can easily have them in Italy itself. Life would be a lot safer for these people if people besides criminals and bribed cops had them.
Italy has a homicide rate of 0.9/100k. The US, homeland of your argument 'if only X had a gun!' and where concealed carry is rife, has as homicide rate of 4.7/100k.
Seems to me that the Italians are doing better here.
The Italian homicide rate is mostly dominated by organized crime. This was particularly extreme at the beginning of the 90's where homicides related to organized crime where almost 40% of the total and the rate was closer to 3/100k.
You basically see the homicide rate spike up in conjunction with mafia wars, which can kill up to 1000 victims in the span of a handful of years.
New York State has a murder rate of 4.4/100k. New York State has fairly stringent, by American standards at least, firearms laws. Vermont has a murder rate of 1/100k, on par with Italy. Vermont has almost no firearms laws beyond the federal ones, and in fact anyone over the age of 18 can carry a concealed handgun with no permit required.
It's almost like there are different factors that affect crime rates than simple access to firearms :^)
That's beautifully cherry-picked data, given that Vermont's most populous city only has 42k people in it. My home suburb has 60k, for comparison.
Would that be considered one of your 'different factors', that it has no real urban environments to compare to New York (eg NYC 8M) or Italy (eg Rome 4M)? Hardly an apples-to-apples comparison.
By your logic it sounds like we should be banning cities rather than banning guns. Additionally, it makes the comparison of the US and Italy invalid, because the two are in no way comparable in terms of population.
Let's try Washington, D.C. (population ~600,000) with almost 22 murders per 100k vs Houston, TX (population ~2 million) which had 11.8 murders per 100,000. Both are urban environments, and in this case the more populous one did not have a higher homicide rate.
But let's back up for a second and see if these differences are even meaningful. Comparing the overall rates for the US and and Italy (and assuming that all people are equally likely to be murdered), you have a 0.00001% chance of getting murdered in Italy and a 0.00005% chance of getting murdered in the US.
I'm pointing out that Vermont doesn't have any dense urban environments. You should look at criminology more before making some of the crazy claims you're making. Yes, more crime happens in urban environments; criminology is pretty clear on this. But what you originally did was point to a largely non-urban area and claim it as a counterpoint to places that have dense urban locations.
you have a 0.00001% chance of getting murdered in Italy and a 0.00005% chance of getting murdered in the US.
Presenting the statistics this way? Yes, you really do need to study criminology a bit more to understand why this is a bad way to present data. In Honduras, you have a 0.0009% chances of getting murdered (per year). Still sounds tiny, yet that country is the murder capital of the world and very much not safe to live in.
It's also worth noting that I never said that crime was directly proportional to population.
Edit: the other side of the 0.00005% argument is: if you're making the argument that it's really rare to die from guns, then why bother with the 'if only X had a gun' argument? If it's that 'rare', why bother making that argument in the first place?
You (anybody in fact) can have them too in Italy. You have to get a license though - before you can purchase one. Mind you, having one and carrying it along with you is considered very different.
I don't think so. Criminals would have to get bigger guns and would be more willing to fire, police too. People would risk getting shot much often and won't get around firing to criminals anyway: I never seen that happen even in countries like the USA with free access to guns. It's lose lose for everybody unless for the ones that sell guns.
Helsinki, Finland had what amounted to a crowdsourced version of this that allowed reporting of any public safety issue: http://www.lahivinkki.com
The core problem with any service like this is twofold: you first need to get enough volume to make it sustainable, and then you need a lot of human moderation to clean up the junk.
I think I met half the addicts in Helsiki one night while jet lagged: The taxi diver took me to the wrong hotel - a Soviet-inspired hulk on the plaza with the bus terminal - after a meeting at Nokia. I woke up at 3am. Hadn't eaten all day. There was a 24 hour McDonalds next door. Yeah, that's who's there at 3am. The whole scene was about as candy-ass as the kleinmotorrad bikers in Vienna. Not exactly a no-go zone.
I see from the map that it's pretty likely that there was a good deal of commerce in other than Big Macs on that night.
