I grew up in an area where people have these signs and bumper stickers, and never had a problem socializing. I saw no evidence that people couldn't trust their neighbors or community. I've seen these in rural and urban places as well, and still haven't seen any issue like what you're suggesting. What's the problem supposed to be?

How do those signs introduce trust by advertising violence? Furthermore, I do not want my children playing with other families who have guns inside the household. I don't see it as safe.

Why hang a sign that insinuates "I may shoot you", unless that person really means it?

Because the neighbors know that violence will only be directed against those causing harm in the neighborhood, restoring peace should criminal activity cross a line, and deterring criminal activity by assuring perpetrators will not benefit from their vile actions.

I know other families who have guns are willing & able to protect my children. They've thought about such situations, and have means to protect the innocent.

The signs are clearly intended for would-be criminals, that is the well understood meaning of a phrase like "we don't call 911" or "this house protected by Smith and Wesson". Nobody who lives next to such a house thinks these signs describe them or are meant for them at all, because they aren't criminals. The "I may shoot you" interpretation never occurs to them, because they don't think "I may rob this house" either.

You make a fundamental mistake by thinking that the sign has any effect on how much I trust my neighbors. Unless it's a NAMBLA flag, I am not going to let a bumper sticker or slogan override my personal experience of a person. Most people are like this.

The problem is not specifically criminals, but how people react to others under stress, and how they view guns in their lives. Do they turn to guns quickly, or do they find peaceful solutions? The posted signs are one way to judge, and I really do hope most people are peaceful, even though they portray violence. My family's safety could depend on their true nature.

An example of someone's recent true nature:

>> A Washington man was arrested after officials said he shot and killed a neighbor for revving his engine too loudly.

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/state/washington/article...

Those familiar with guns know their place, and are (on the whole) actually much less likely to harm others without cause - precisely because they are familiar with the likely harm.

One cherry-picked anecdote is insufficient. A million or so crimes, murders included, are deterred/stopped every year - most without firing a shot.

> A million or so crimes, murders included, are deterred/stopped every year - most without firing a shot.

The data don't really suggest that this is the case. Compared to other western countries, America has the same rate of crime. The difference is, of course, that criminal activity is more likely to involve firearms and thus death.

>Unless it's a NAMBLA flag, I am not going to let a bumper sticker or slogan override my personal experience of a person. Most people are like this.

If you have lots of personal experiences with a person, that's great. But many people don't have real relationships with their neighbors. Bumper stickers and slogans absolutely will impact such relations, they make first impressions. I certainly wouldn't trust almost-strangers with tons of flat-earth stuff to tutor my kids, would you?

In my experience, conservative and moderate-leaning people do not require a priori confirmation of ideological alignment with a person before they try to know them. Especially if they live next door. In conservative places, where you would expect to find more armed households, you would also see more neighborly relationship in my experience.

That's fantastic. Does this sense of community continue to apply when a black family moves in?

The derangement of liberals knows no end, I see. Just nakedly projecting his own internal reality without a hint of self-awareness.

Being brown myself, I promise you that your cherished pet minorities are doing fine in the suburbs. None of us are looking to urban whites as a savior, and you don't need to involve us in your feud with rural whites. Many of the people who I know that are gun owners are black -- they're very neighborly as well!

I'm glad your experiences have been good. But that doesn't make it true for the country as a whole. Here's a quote by Former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich:

"It's more dangerous to be black in America[...] It's both more dangerous because of crime, which is the Chicago story. But it is more dangerous in that you're substantially more likely to end up in a situation where police don't respect you where you could easily get killed. I think sometimes for whites it's difficult to appreciate how real that is."

That's completely unrelated to whether your rural neighbors will be friendly, though. In fact, both things he mentions - crime and police - are going to be primarily experienced in urban, democratic areas by African Americans.

Are you suggesting that racism is a predominantly urban phenomenon?

Respectfully, you may think you're developing a coherent argument, but you are jumping around between several unrelated points.

Does racism exist? Of course. It probably is even higher among rural and suburban individuals, on some kind of self-reported metric.

Does it have an appreciable, significantly negative impact on the lives of most non-white people in 2021? The evidence is pretty dubious on this point IMO, but of course it depends on your definition of impactful.

Is it related to gun violence? I don't see how.

What argument? I was literally just asking a question. If you thought I was making some statement about gun violence, I suggest that you calm down and stop reading too much into random comments on the internet.

Sure, I guess if someone is asking a loaded (and flippant IMO) question, they can be said to be "literally just asking a question." But I'm not sure how seriously to take "I'm not making a comment about gun violence" several comments deep into a thread about gun violence.

In this thread? I have mentioned nothing of weapons. I really don't know how to tell you that threads and conversations quickly change topic. I'm genuinely curious what statement on gun violence my question was supposed to be making.

I am suggesting that "being African American" is a disproportionately urban phenomenon.

Which goes back to the original point: gun violence is a geographically limited phenomenon.

Is this still true? This article (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.calhealthreport.org/2018/04...) suggests that it's no longer the case in California.

If you follow through to the referenced article, they show a map of CA with extremely high variability between counties. Moreover, the county boundaries themselves are quite broad geographically. For example, it shows Contra Costa as having 5+ gun deaths per 100k, but do you think that's Walnut Creek and Pleasanton's contribution? Or Concord's? Similar questions could be asked about Alameda or Los Angeles counties.

Can you elaborate on how this disqualifies the study findings? I also read it, they say:

"To describe the urban-rural distribution of firearm mortality, we used the county-level metropolitan/nonmetropolitan classification from the United States Department of Agriculture’s 2013 Rural-Urban Continuum Codes, which defines nonmetropolitan (rural) counties as having communities of fewer than 50,000 people with less than 25% of the workforce commuting to a metropolitan(urban)county".

Does that work?

I'm not sure how to reconcile that note with figures 5, 6 which show county level aggregation. Moreover, I just noticed that this survey deals with firearm mortality and not homicides by gunshot.

Broadly speaking, if someone says "we should severely curtail gun ownership because at a per-county level some counties have very high firearm mortality rates," it does seem reasonable to me to object on the basis that:

1. in terms of the intersection of quality of life and foundational rights, I care more about the rate of homicide, not gun mortality (which includes accident and suicide). Rights imply responsibility, so the appropriate question is whether people are capable of being responsible with their rights. It is irresponsible if you harm others with the exercise of your freedom.

2. on the basis of individual cities and towns, high gun ownership (freedom) does not seem to correlate to higher homicide (irresponsibility). That phenomenon seems restricted to dense urban areas where gun control is already in effect, and other geographies -- mostly poorer regions where stronger gang and drug enforcement seems warranted.

I'm trying to understand the problem with defining rural and urban areas at a county level. Aren't they looking at per capita fatality rates? Obviously urban centers massively out populate rural ones. I don't really see how rural land around an urban center is poisoning the results here. Ultimately, the authors found that gun violence per capita isn't significantly greater in urban counties than in rural ones.

"A statistician is someone who drowns while crossing a river that is three feet deep, on average"

If you understand that joke, you understand the objection.

Suddenly, the entire study of statistics and demography is unsound to you after I ask for clarification on your issues with a paper's conclusions.

I don't know what sort of answer you're looking for. I've lived in California my entire life, and saying all parts of Contra Costa or Los Angeles or Alameda counties are equally prone to gun violence is a statistical slight of hand that bears little resemblance to reality. Anyone who lives here knows that.

Unfortunately, in 2021, dense minority-dominated districts tend to be high in gun crime. If you don't live in one of those area, it's like a European country, in terms of living standards and crimes rates.

> Furthermore, I do not want my children playing with other families who have guns inside the household. I don't see it as safe.

So we get to the crux of it. It's not the signs that prevent you from socializing with your community.

On to the signs. "Posted, no trespassing" is an indication that bad things may happen if you jump a fence. Maybe all it is is getting arrested and charges pressed. Do signs like that make you feel unsafe?

Signs like that are intended to deter the wrong kind of people, that is, those who would harm you. They have the added side effect of bringing together like minded people, and deterring socialization from people with a problem with it.

> On to the signs. "Posted, no trespassing" is an indication that bad things may happen if you jump a fence. Maybe all it is is getting arrested and charges pressed. Do signs like that make you feel unsafe?

No. Those suggest a normal, decent, measured response, rather than a spirit of escalation. A sign like "talk shit, get hit" would worry me though.

The elephant in the room is race.

I'm just as ready and willing to shoot the white meth-head around the block if he breaks in as I am a black crack-head who breaks in.

Seeing neighbors with signs like that make me feel more welcome, not less.