02

The most active thread over the weekend was titled, "I'm a DC resident, applied for my CCW, and I'm now carrying concealed". Posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics", the original poster says that he is a Democrat who believes in sensible gun control but because of increased crime in Washington, DC he has now obtained a firearm with which to defend himself. Crime and guns are two topics that can always be guaranteed to generate a lot of traffic and this thread combines both So, there is no surprise that it was the most active thread. While rates of violent crime in DC are up and far too high, they are considerably lower than at other times during my nearly 40 years of living in DC. I've been wondering why feelings such as the original poster expresses seem much more common now than in the past. The original poster says that he has "never before experienced so much random, reckless, and violent crime". I wonder if this is a literal statement in that the original poster himself has been a victim of such crimes or that by "experience" the original poster means that he knows about such crimes. As far as I can tell, that point was never clarified in the thread. I think that the most obvious instigator of fear of crime is being a victim of crime or having acquaintances, relatives, or neighbors who are victims. But, almost as important, I suspect, is simply knowing about crime in relatively close vicinity to you, even if you don't have any personal connections to it. I've written before how violent crime in DC today seems a lot more geographically distributed than in the past. So, while murder rates were higher when I first arrived in DC, they were concentrated in a few areas and most DC residents simply ignored the violence. Now, murders occur throughout the city which naturally spreads concern and fear much wider. But, another element I think adds to heightened fear of crime is social media and the rise of social media crime reporters. The DC area has a number of individuals who follow police scanners and other information sources and immediately post about violent crime on social media. Those posts get reposted elsewhere and spread by others, often being the basis of DCUM threads. This spreads knowledge of crime beyond what it was in the past. There is the old expression that "ignorance is bliss" and this is one case in which I think that increased knowledge — in addition to having positive effects — can also have negative outcomes. In this case, it might have the impact of creating fear that is not necessarily supported by reality. Others can obviously argue that increased knowledge of local crime actually leads to a more rational risk analysis. I can see both arguments. The bottom line is whether people "feel" unsafe is more important for their individual actions than whether they actually "are" unsafe. I frequently feel that social media crime reports contribute to making us feel less safe while, in actuality, whether we really do face more of a threat may not have changed. It would be interesting to know whether this poster was drive to purchase a gun by an actual or perceived threat of violent crime.