The gangster era of the 1920s, its high profile bank robbers, and the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, are all associated with the Thompson Submachine Gun. The nearly 11 pound Thompson depicted in the movies of that era has, since then, rarely been seen in the hands of civilians. The Thompson only appears in proper military use in movies of World War II and Korea, not as a street weapon. That’s not because the Thompson Submachine Gun is illegal for civilians to own. I was recently reminded of this when an old friend back East introduced me to his Tommy Gun. My friend assured me that he is in full compliance with the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA): He purchased the historic weapon (now worth around $20,000) from a registered and authorized dealer. He paid the one-time federal $200 fee and complied with the federally required background checks and paperwork through the The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). More than a year following the purchase of his Thompson he was finally able to take possession of it. There are even a few gun ranges in his area that are equipped to have him to properly bring his Thompson and fire it, burning up $20 worth of .45 calibre ammunition in a matter of seconds by simply holding down the trigger.
The 1934 National Firearms Act succeeded in getting the Thompson Submachine Gun out of the hands of criminals, but it still allows law-abiding, detail oriented citizens to own and enjoy (yes, enjoy) the ownership, display, and careful use of the weapon. Take note that the 1934 NFA regulates not only the Thompson and all full automatic weapons (one trigger pull, more than one round fired), but a slew of other weapons that were designed primarily to kill people. Those include certain short barreled (“sawed-off”) shotguns and rifles, pistol-grip shotguns, pen-guns, knife guns, cane guns—and silencers. (If you want to dive into the weeds on what is covered click here and go to chapter 2.)
In 1934 we faced a crisis of crime based in part on these weapons—and we, through our federal government, passed legislation that works—legislation that is still enforced today—in spite of the efforts of the current NRA, firearms manufacturers, and the Supreme Court. Every Republican I can think of, including Eastern Washington’s U.S. Representative, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (CMR), has worked and is working to chip away at the provisions of the National Firearms Act—but they only want to advertise their actions to their gun-crazed constituents, not the rest of us.
Yes, mild-mannered McMorris Rodgers is, once again, a proud (but quiet) co-sponsor of the current Congress’s Hearing Protection Act, H.R.95 (2021-22), an act that would repeal the 1934 National Firearms Act’s provision requiring registration of silencers. Imagine, for a moment, the additional number of elementary school students and teachers who might have died in Uvalde, if the killer’s assault weapon’s discharge had been muffled, his initial shots not much noticed and harder to localize. Then think of McMorris Rodgers’ co-sponsorship of the disingenuous “Hearing Protection Act” quietly marketed to her assault-weapon-wielding supporters. If you are not yet angry, you should be. McMorris Rodgers isn’t just dragging her feet, she is moving backwards—even as she offers “thoughts and prayers”.
Current “bi-partisan” legislation under discussion in the U.S. Congress might be marginally useful, but, compared to what is required to make a dent in this slaughter, these Congressional efforts are a cruel joke: funds for “hardening” schools, incentives for states to pass “red flag” laws, ensuring that juvenile records can be accessed in deciding whether an 18-21 year old can buy an assault weapon, and some token funding for mental health care.
If banning them outright seems like too extreme a solution to be politically palatable, here’s another option: Reclassify semi-automatic rifles as Class 3 firearms.
That would mean that someone wanting to purchase an AR-15 would have to go through a background check, fingerprinting and review by an official from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — a process that takes anywhere from 12 to 16 months. And since Class 3 weapons can’t be purchased by anyone younger than 21, it would solve the issue of emotionally unstable 18-year-olds buying them.
A Class 3 firearm reclassification would also make those who are approved to purchase these weapons subject to an annual check that they are complying with federal regulations regarding secure storage of the firearm, and to confirm their licensing and other paperwork is up to date. All of these hoops and hurdles are sure to reduce the civilian demand for these weapons.
As a gun owner I might quibble over whether to include all semi-automatic rifles. Semi-automatic hunting rifles with limited magazine capacity and non-detachable magazines would be logical exceptions—but leaving them in would still be a small price to pay to start reducing the painful toll of carnage.
The latest wave of mass murders in this country didn’t come about overnight. Our national obsession with people-killing weaponry in civilian hands has been fed by the modern NRA, gun manufacturers, and the anti-government, fear-mongering Republicans they own for more than forty years. We won’t turn that around with the minor tweaks currently discussed in Congress.
As a country we dealt with a wave of mass murder before—in 1934. The NFA kept (and still keeps) some of the deadliest of that era’s people-killing machines out of the hands of irresponsible people. Let’s update the NFA to account for the newer people-killing technology. We know how to do this.
On May 26, 2022, two days after a shooter wielding an assault rifle fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde TX, one of my readers wrote to U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (CD-5, Eastern WA). He implored her to support legislation that would at least ban high capacity magazines, or, better, ban civilian ownership of weapons of war. As usual, McMorris Rodgers ignored the plea and stuck flawlessly to Republican talking points supporting “sober conversations”, “mental health”, and claiming credit for helping pass (in 2018) two impressive sounding laws, theSTOP School Violence Actand theFix NICS Act, neither of which accomplishes anything substantive. STOP offers grants for “hardening” schools; Fix NICS penalizes certain government agencies for not reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). McMorris Rodgers claims she was “a vocal advocate for the Department of Justice review and subsequent banning of bump stocks” in the Fix NICS legislation—but she neglects to mention that banning bump stocks (apparently a huge concession for CMR) didn’t make it into the final law. (You might remember bump stocks as a topic of discussion after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting that killed 60 music festival participants and wounded 411 more. All a bump stock does is further increase the rate of fire of an already ridiculously effective people-killer. No mass murderer has bothered to use a bump stock since that shooting.) (The text of CMR’s letter is copied at the very bottom of this email—for those who can bear to read it.)
The bottom line on CMR’s stance on the assault weaponry that is killing us: “I want you to believe that I’m doing important things in Congress to address this issue, but I will never vote for any bill that limits in any way the civilian ownership of weapons of war.” It should be clear to all who read her letter that the only way to obtain federal action on this issue is to vote McMorris Rodgers and her fellow Republicans in the U.S. Congress out of office.
McMorris Rodgers just doesn’t “get” it. The “arms” borne today far surpass in people-killing capacity anything the Founders knew or contemplated. Modern assault weaponry also far surpasses firearms we still heavily regulate in this country (as I pointed out in Where is the National Will?, People Killers and the refusal to act).
Doug Muder, who writes the highly recommended Weekly Sift, nails this issue in his June 6, 2022 post, America’s guns have changed in my lifetime, The guns I grew up with wouldn’t have been much use in a massacre. Mr. Muder, like me, grew up in Midwestern gun culture. His main point: The same percentage of American households own guns now as they did in the 1960s—but the guns they own are very, very different. Click the link to his article or read the copy I’ve added below (and sign up for his posts, if you haven’t already).
The guns I grew up with wouldn’t have been much use in a massacre.
Comparing the United States to other countries is one of the most powerful arguments for gun control. Recurring mass shootings is a problem unique to the US, and so it requires an equally unique explanation. Other industrialized countries also have mental illness, video games, abortion, secularism, and all the other factors NRA-sponsored politicians and pundits raise to divert attention from guns. But other wealthy countries don’t have America’s mass-shooting problem, or its gun-violence problem in general, because they don’t have America’s guns.
The best attempt I’ve seen to counter this argument is to compare the US not with any other country, but with our own past: The problem can’t be the sheer number of guns in the US, because Americans have always owned a lot of guns.
Gallup has been asking about gun ownership since the 1960s, and the percentage of American households with guns has been fairly stable, perhaps even showing a slight downward trend.
Mass shootings weren’t considered a major problem in 1960, this counter-argument goes, so the cause can’t just be guns. Whatever the X-factor is, it has to be something that has changed in recent decades. That, presumably, is how people come to blame video games, abortion, and secularism, despite their presence in other countries.
The flaw in this logic is that the guns of America’s civilian arsenal have changed a lot in recent decades. Yes, a lot of Americans have always owned guns. But they didn’t own guns like this.
You’ll often see this point made about the guns of the 18th century, the ones the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment — as in this cartoon.
What’s not as well appreciated is how much guns have changed in living memory. My memory, for example.
Sometime in my pre-teen years in the late 1960s, my Dad thought it might be a bonding experience for us to go hunting. So he bought a 12-gauge shotgun for himself and a .410 shotgun for me. His held five shells and mine three. Both moved new shells into the firing chamber with a pump action. Pumping could throw off your aim, so without a lot of practice it was just about impossible to shoot even the five or three shells quickly, at least if you wanted to hit anything.
And while reloading wasn’t that hard, once you got onto it, it wasn’t nearly as quick or easy as snapping in a new clip. But it didn’t need to be. The point was to keep firing until your quarry either fell or fled, which would probably happen in a matter of seconds. After that, you were looking at another extended period of stalking — that’s why the sport is called “hunting” rather than “shooting” — so you had plenty of time to dig a few shells out of a pocket and slide them into the shotgun.
Dad also owned a .22 rifle, which typically lived out on our farm, about 15 miles from our house in town. I don’t remember how many bullets it held, but it wasn’t many. I occasionally shot targets with it, but not with any practical goal like hunting or self-defense. (A post on a survivalist message board is blunt about such a rifle’s self-defense limitations: “A .22 round has virtually no ‘stopping power’. It takes a hit directly to vital organs like the heart or brain to ‘stop’ somebody with a .22.”)
That was our whole arsenal. We were, I believe, a more-or-less typical gun-owning family of the era. (At least in the rural Midwest. Perhaps things were already different in the South; I wouldn’t know.) Many of my friends had a similar exposure to guns, which they used (rarely, and under adult supervision) to hunt quail or ducks or rabbits. (I once ate fried squirrels that a neighbor had killed. They did indeed taste like chicken.) I heard about men going on deer-hunting trips, but I don’t remember my friends bragging about hunting deer themselves.
One possible use for our guns never came up: killing people intentionally. Everyone knew, of course, that a shotgun or a rifle of any caliber could kill someone. Occasionally I would hear about hunting accidents, or that someone (though not anyone I knew personally) had committed suicide with a gun. My dentist once surprised burglars at his vacation home, and they shot him with a shotgun they were stealing from him. (At least that’s the story I remember hearing. He lived, but ever after had marks on his face from where the pellets hit. Years later he became the father-in-law of my best friend from elementary school.)
But shooting people was an accident to be avoided, not something we trained to do. For practice we shot at bottles or clay pigeons, not human figures on paper. Dad and I never talked about repelling a home invasion with our shotguns, and I doubt he had such a plan. (Our home would have been pretty easy to invade in the summer, when we often just fastened a screen door with a hook. The shotguns were in the basement and unloaded. Using them quickly would have been difficult. If Dad secretly kept a more convenient gun, I believe I would have found it when I cleaned out the house after he died.) And we certainly never discussed joining a group that might fight against the government.
The guns also were not a part of our identity, either as individuals or as a family. They were sporting equipment, like baseball gloves or basketballs, and had little symbolic significance. So we did not assemble a collection to display with pride, or join a shooting club, or hang around in gun shops. I don’t think I knew what the NRA was.
I had a toy M-16 as a kid, so I knew about such weapons, which soldiers were using in Vietnam. Apparently the civilian semi-automatic version, the AR-15, was already on the market. But it never occurred to me that we might buy one. (Why would we? If you hit a rabbit with a burst from an AR-15, there wouldn’t be much left.)
In short, our gun-owning household didn’t have anything like the destructive capability that millions and millions of American households have today. If I had ever gone on a rampage with our guns, I couldn’t have run up anything like the body counts we’ve seen lately, and most of my victims would probably have lived. Once the police arrived, I couldn’t have held them at bay for long.
I don’t even remember having that fantasy. Owning a shotgun made me an occasional hunter, not a warrior. My warrior fantasies, such as they were, involved joining the military, not going out in a blaze of glory on Main Street.
So no, past America is not comparable to America today in terms of an individual’s ability to commit mass murder. The percentage of gun-owning households may not have changed that much in the past 60 years, but the guns Americans own certainly have.
CMR’s email letter dated May 26, 2022:
Thank you for contacting me about the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I am heartbroken over the loss of 21 innocent lives and cannot begin to imagine the pain the parents and loved ones of these children and teachers are experiencing.
Too many Americans, kids and adults, are in crisis. We must get to the bottom of what is tearing our communities apart and what would make someone feel like their only option is to commit an act of violence on innocent victims in their community.
In many mass shootings, the shooters showed signs. While we continue to learn more details, we do know that the perpetrator of this horrific crime had a history of concerning social media posts and interactions with local police related to violent activity. These types of warning signs cannot go unaddressed. My goal will always be to protect our constitutionally-designated rights, while also keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have access to them. We should give law enforcement the tools they need to intervene when there are threats of gun violence without violating the due process rights of citizens.
I was honored to be recognized by Sandy Hook Promise in 2018 after helping to get the STOP School Violence Act and the Fix NICS Act signed into law. These laws provide more resources for schools and law enforcement to keep schools safe and fix the federal background check system to ensure people who shouldn’t have guns aren’t falling through the cracks. I also continue to advocate for annual funding to support STOP School Violence Act programs. I was also a vocal advocate for the Department of Justice review and subsequent banning of bump stocks under President Trump after the 2017 mass shooting tragedy in Las Vegas.
While the Energy and Commerce Committee, which I lead as the Ranking Republican, does not have jurisdiction over gun control policy, one if it’s primary focuses is on the federal mental health programs that are critical to reaching people who are in despair, as well as providing resources to individuals who are in crisis. I am leading a package of bills with my colleague Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) called the Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act that will strengthen the federal mental health response. This package contains many measures, including provisions to reauthorize the Pediatric Mental Health Care Access grant program and Comprehensive Mental Health Services for Children with Serious Emotional Disturbances grants. It also establishes a new Mental Health Crisis Response Partnership Pilot Program to help communities establish mobile crisis teams that can respond to individuals who are showing signs of experiencing a mental health crisis.
I was proud to help pass this bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee and am hopeful it will soon come to the House floor for a vote. You can read more about the Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act here. Like any parent, I send my kids to school every day so they can learn, reach their full potential, and just be kids! We should not have to worry about the unthinkable happening in America. It is going to take all of us as Americans — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — coming together to have sober conversations about solutions to end this crisis of desperation and despair in our communities.
As your advocate in Congress, my top priority is to listen to you and lead on solutions you can count on. Please stay in touch. I send out a regular update that gives you an inside look at my week ahead. You can subscribe by clicking here.
Imagine that during the pandemic you lost your slightly better than minimum wage job; what little savings you had were soon used up trying to pay the rent and feed yourself. You lack local family support. Spokane property values skyrocketed, your landlord raised the rent by twenty percent, you couldn’t keep up and were evicted from your one-room apartment (or you simply saw no alternative but to leave). You have some basic camping equipment you can put in your car (which barely runs and you cannot afford to fix). You have a sleeping bag, some extra clothing, a few canned goods—and no place to sleep except your car—which stands out as an eyesore on any residential street. You are homeless, but you’ve still got some of the basics of life, stuff to which you understandably cling, stuff you don’t know how you would replace if it were taken from you—and you have no place to safely store any of it.
You dare not view the police as being on your side. You cannot expect help from them if your stuff is stolen or you’re beaten or injured by someone else on the street.
If you still have or can find employment life how will you manage? Can you afford a cell phone? If not, how does anyone contact you to offer you an extra work shift? You have no postal address to receive official mail, like a W-2. All those routine things of life that were fairly simple when you had a little money and your small apartment—those things are difficult and time consuming: personal hygiene, washing and drying clothes, obtaining and preparing food. If you have a job where do you store the stuff on which you feel your life depends?
In this scenario you certainly wouldn’t find yourself “too comfortable”—as Mayor Woodward seems to think you might be. After all, “too comfortable” must be avoided so as not to “enable” you to continue to enjoy(?) this lifestyle.
What are your alternatives to trying to hold on by parking your dilapidated vehicle or pitching your tent in some out-of-the-way place? There you might be able to guard or at least hide your stuff for a while before you’re told to move on—or your car is towed or your tent and belongings thrown in a dumpster by the city while you’re out trying to find a job or something to eat.
Now let’s say the city is offering you a cot at the new Trent shelter side by side with a throng of homeless folks, people who might be mentally unstable, people who might steal what few belongings you’ve been allowed to retain, people with whom you feel you must be on your guard at all times.
You may have to abandon much of what little you still have upon entering a one-size-fits-all shelter space with people you neither know nor trust, all in the hope of being connected with “services” that might get you on a three year waiting list for “affordable” housing. Or you could struggle to live and keep guarding your stuff on the street. Or you could seek both a place and a social network at Camp Hope, the current, relatively stable camp of over 400 souls in tents, campers, and RVs on Department of Transportation land near Freya and I-90 in Spokane.
Here is a question I’ve not heard anyone else express: Imagine the Trent shelter is up and running and offering “low barrier” beds that many of the currently homeless are, for many and varied reasons, still unwilling to occupy—except in the worst weather. Once those cots are available and not occupied (regardless of the number of beds being wholly insufficient to house everyone currently homeless), will Mayor Woodward and her allies in parts of the business community use that lack of occupancy as an excuse to dismantle and, thereby, disperse Camp Hope? Is that the unspoken plan? Is that the reason the Mayor Woodward seems resistant to considering multiple alternatives like pallet shelters (aggregated, single room, lockable shelters), camp sites, car and RV parks, and the like that might serve the broader and diverse needs of the diverse community rendered homeless by circumstance?
Below is an article from Buzzfeed that re-opened a window for me on some of the heart-rending and unsettling challenges homeless people face.
Some of my readers may be tempted (as I have been—at times) to dismiss homeless people for having made “poor choices” in life, implying that they deserve to be punished and made more uncomfortable—as the supposed necessary motivation to better themselves. Homelessness may be complicated in any number of ways: add an ill or disabled family member or friend, or a beloved pet to the story, for example, and life becomes even more complicated and challenging.
This one-size-fits-all shelter of Mayor Woodward’s may be a worthwhile start. Declaring the problem solved and dispersing the residents of Camp Hope throughout the city, if that’s where we are headed, is not a solution.
People who experience homelessness face countless obstacles just to get their basic needs met. Everyday necessities like food, hygiene, and sleep become much more complicated without housing.
Well, a viral Reddit thread from user u/hayz00s once asked people who’ve been homeless to share the unwritten rules they had to follow in order to get by. Their responses were eye-opening, heartbreaking, and a critical reminder to help the people who are unhoused in your city.
So here are 26 unwritten rules of being homeless, according to people who’ve actually lived it:
1. “When dumpster diving, if you find a pair of shoes or clothes and they are not your size, then leave them neatly by the side of the dumpster for the next diver.”
4. “Share what you have with your group. What goes around comes around. If there is a group of you, each person can stand on a different corner to beg and make far more than you would by yourself.”
5. “Look out for each other and be good to each other. We’re all struggling, so let’s make it as good as we can for each other. When I was homeless we paid for each other’s food, clothes, and any other essentials if one was truly in need.”
6. “The big one I remember is that you always take off your shoes when you sleep. And if you sleep outside, sleep on top of your bag and tuck your shoes under it. Sometimes my bag was way too packed to pull that off comfortably, but people would take your shoes. Just to fuck with you.”
7. “Sleep with your valuables at your feet in your sleeping bag. If you don’t have a sleeping bag, put them in your backpack, and use your backpack as a pillow if possible, with one arm through one strap.”
11. “If you’re trying to run away from good parents, and are underage, we will make sure the police find you. Kid was 15, and after talking with his friends, we heard no reason for him to be running away (teenage angst). Made sure the police took him home, and left my cell phone number in case he ran away again.”
14. “Even if you’re not religious, if a religious family offers you a place to stay (sometimes ‘if you go to church with us,’ but not always), don’t turn it down.”
15. “Just because I was homeless, that didn’t mean I didn’t work two jobs. Would work about 56 hours a week at a gas station between 2 stores, and then did the usual selling papers on the streets in the morning.”
16. “No one’s pressing charges or calling the cops. If you get into a fight with someone, it’s all he said, she said bullshit. Everyone takes it, and conflicts resolve themselves. Everyone you’re around is homeless, you gotta stay in that shelter with them every night, you’ll share the same public spaces that everyone who’s homeless has to. You don’t have a choice. Keep to yourself, don’t mouth off, don’t fuck with anyone else, or you’ll get fucked with.”
—Anonymous
17. “Hygiene!!!! Clean all of it. Clean. Clean. Find all shelters, soup kitchens, churches, mental health associations, and libraries. Most of those places hand out soap, toothbrushes, and hygienic shit. Use it. Wash your clothing any way you can.”
18. “For my family, I remember that we would go to the library every day for several hours at a time. It’s a place where extended stays aren’t particularly unusual. Additionally, you have AC/heat, internet/computer access, water fountains, bathrooms, lounge chairs, and nearly endless educating vessels surrounding you in the form of books. TL;DR: If you’re ever homeless, go to the library.”
19. “Most people don’t want to acknowledge you exist. I’d say don’t get frustrated with that, but it gets old really fast. Just find a way to make your day a little brighter. And be careful with what people give you. There’s a lot of assholes out there.”
20. “Cops hate the homeless, stay away. Mental health agencies are a gamble; if you actually have issues, they may report you to police. If you don’t, they still might report you to police. Most homeless take advantage of the free resources offered by these agencies, so they go to them, but they are often bad news. Just take the resources and run.”
21. “Regardless of what the police say, no, you’re not going to get your things back. Oh, and don’t argue with them. They’ll beat the crap out of you for no reason in a lot of cases because you don’t have anybody standing up for you politically. So expect to be woken up really early, randomly, and be searched and then told to move.”
23. “If you’re female and it’s late fall/winter/early spring, wear a mens padded jacket, sneakers, sweat pants, and a woolen hat. Make yourself as masculine as possible. Don’t sleep on roadsides or alleyways; find a rooftop with somewhat of a difficult entrance to navigate. Always give the illusion that you’re a small man or young boy. You’ll be left alone more.”
—Anonymous
24. “People see what they perceive to be a homeless young female, and they think drugs and mental illness. They also think victim and sexually exploitable. For this reason, you must do all you can to not appear homeless.”
—Anonymous
25. “Get a gym membership. Sounds nutty, but 24-hour available showers, exercise, and a place to charge your phone away from work is always welcome.”
26. “For food, I figured out the times bakeries threw away the day’s sandwiches. Thirty minutes after they had thrown a trash bag full of still-fresh sandwiches and cakes in the dumpster, I was unsealing the bag and having a feast on a rooftop somewhere.”
—Anonymous
You can read the full thread of responses on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Many people have a ready explanation for the burgeoning number of homeless people in their city of residence. Favorites include blaming the condition of being homeless on sloth, addiction, mental illness, or, according to City of Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward, the idea that we’ve made homelessness too “comfortable”.
Few people expressing these opinions offer data to back up their contention, least of all those who consider homelessness too comfortable. When credible researchers present data that compares the ubiquitous problem of homelessness across U.S. cities it deserves attention.
One key dynamic of urban homelessness is laid bare in a new book by a pair of Seattle researchers.
When they compared major cities across the country, they found that homelessness was not strongly associated with high levels of poverty in a community.
What it was very strongly correlated with was high levels of wealth.
The authors of this new book, “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” found that many cities with very high levels of poverty – from Detroit to Dallas to Miami to Philadelphia – have relatively low rates of homelessness.
Meanwhile, many expensive coastal cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, have comparably low poverty rates – and much more homelessness.
Homelessness, in other words, is “more a symptom of affluence than of poverty,” the book concludes – because of the effect on the overall housing market. Communities with a lot of poverty, but sufficient affordable housing, have among the lowest rates of homelessness.
This is food for thought as we struggle with our own homelessness crisis and housing shortage. The relationship between our tight, increasingly expensive housing market and the number of people living on the streets is direct. As affordability and access shrink, the number of people who fall out of that market rises.
That may seem commonplace, and others have made a similar point. But in this new book, authors Gregg Colburn, a University of Washington real estate professor, and Clayton Page Aldern, a neuroscientist turned journalist and data scientist, have produced a set of comparisons among American cities that dramatically reinforce that reality.
Their book does not attempt to address individual causes of homelessness, whether it’s addiction, mental health or bad luck. (Though they emphasize that research indicates the approach with the most success among individuals is permanent supportive housing with voluntary, not mandated, support services.)
It takes as a given that those problems exist everywhere, and attempts to answer why there is so much variability in homelessness among major cities.
The title gives away the conclusion.
“Regional variation in rates of homelessness can be explained by cost and availability of housing,” they wrote. “Housing market conditions explain why Seattle has four times the per capita homelessness of Cincinnati. Housing market conditions explain why high-poverty cities like Detroit and Cleveland have low rates of homelessness.”
They continued, “Variation in rates of homelessness is not driven by more of ‘those people’ residing in one city than another. People with a variety of health and economic vulnerabilities live in every city and county in our sample; the difference is the local context in which they live. High rental costs and low vacancy rates create a challenging market for many residents in a city and those challenges are compounded for people with low incomes and/or physical or mental health concerns.”
The authors compared cities on a variety of measures, including all the usual suspects in the public discourse about homelessness. (Spokane was not among the cities included.)
These cities varied from those with very high rates of homelessness such as New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco (which have between 9 and 10 homeless individuals per 1,000, according to federal statistics for 2019) and those with lower rates such as Detroit, Chicago and Indianapolis (at 2 to 3 homeless individuals per 1,000).
King County and Multnomah County, Oregon – Seattle and Portland, basically – were both around 5.
What they found should give a lot of people pause about their assumptions.
On mental health measures, they found no correlation between high rates of reported mental illness in a given state and homelessness – in fact, they found the opposite: “Homelessness rates are higher where serious mental illness rates are lower.”
When they examined rates of drug use, they found no correlation: “Accordingly, we can only conclude that the disproportionate rates of homelessness in cities like San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Seattle are not driven by more drug users residing in those locations. Something else is happening here.”
When they looked at unemployment rates, they concluded they have “no predictive value” for whether a city has a lot of homeless people.
Along the way, the authors debunk a few shibboleths. When they looked at the assumptions underlying the infamous “Seattle is Dying” documentary (which focused narrowly on drug abuse and which proposed sending homeless people to McNeil Island) and a “study” on the “ruinous compassion” of shelter by Christopher Rufo (which identified robust shelter capacity as one cause of homelessness), they found no supporting evidence.
They examined the “if you build it they will come” mythology – the notion that providing services lures people into homelessness. They concluded: “The balance of the academic evidence suggests that public assistance benefits and services work to limit homelessness rather than accelerate the phenomenon.”
They also looked at the idea that Democratic policies cause the problem, but concluded by noting that several blue cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland do not have large homelessness problems.
In short, every potential explanation but one fell by the wayside: the cost of rent and the availability of rental units, which are affected by the expense and availability in the overall housing market.
To simplify: A low-income renter in Detroit can find an apartment relatively easily for between $600 and $700 a month, while a similar renter in San Francisco would have a harder time finding one for three to four times that amount.
And that dynamic is affected by a housing market where costs at all levels – mansions to hovels – are high.
“The point is that the housing market – as a whole – helps create the conditions in which homelessness varies from region to region,” the authors write. “It’s not merely a shortage of low-income housing: it’s an overall housing shortage that matters.”
In 1934 the U.S. House and Senate passed, and President Roosevelt signed, the National Firearms Act (1934 NFA). The Act did not make it illegal for a private citizen to own any firearm or accessory. Instead, it requires a complex, time consuming registration process and a one-time tax ($200 at the time—and still today) for a private citizen to own a weapon that would fire more than one cartridge when the trigger is held down (i.e. an “automatic” weapon, aka a machine gun or submachine gun), as well as certain modified weapons and silencers (sound suppressors). In major part, the 1934 NFA was passed in response to the murderous use by gangsters (civilians) of the military weapon pictured below, the 1921 Thompson submachine gun, a weapon originally designed for use in World War I trench warfare. (It was nicknamed “the trench broom”.)
The Thompson (without a magazine) weighs a massive eleven pounds. It fires a pistol cartridge (.45 ACP = .45 inch in diameter Automatic Colt Pistol cartridge). It has minimal accuracy beyond about 30 yards. In full automatic mode it fires off all thirty or fifty cartridges in its magazine in less than ten seconds. On account of its geometry the weapon has a tendency to climb in the course of a firing burst—it is a challenge to keep it on target—especially for the novice user.
As a people killing machine, the still-taxed-and-heavily-regulated Thompson submachine gun is positively primitive by comparison to modern assault weapons like the AR-15 pictured below.
The AR-15 weighs around six pounds, half the weight of the Thompson. It fires a rifle cartridge (.223 Remington) semi-automatically (each shot requires only a quick pull on the trigger). Detachable magazines holding fifty cartridges are easy to buy. The AR’s effective firing range is 500 yards, not 30. Because of its in-line geometry it has almost no tendency to climb with each shot. Given its light weight and controllability, even a child with minimal training from a youtube video can use such a weapon with devastating effect. State regulations vary, but in many states most folks eighteen or older can buy this or a similar people-killing machine quite readily, in contrast to the cost and regulatory hoops required to buy a Thompson submachine gun or any automatic weapon controlled under the 1934 NFA. Yet the real world mass people-killing capabilities of modern assault weapons far exceed any NFA-regulated weapon.
This is nuts. Where is our national will? It is thwarted by Republicans, including our very own Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-CD5, eastern Washington). In the face of yet another mass shooting, Republicans, beholden to the National Rifle Association and the firearms industry, once again offer “thoughts and prayers” and, in response to any talk of firearms or body armor restrictions, respond, “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” McMorris Rodgers dodges the question. She and her Republican compatriots, sold out to the power of the NRA, deflect behind supposed efforts to “keep guns out of the wrong hands” not by regulating guns or closing the gun show loophole (for background checks), but by claiming to support legislation to spur our tattered health care system to detect and report the potentially violent mentally ill to law enforcement before they buy weapons and kill. That is pie in the sky BS, but it is what she offers.
If we are again faced with a Republican House majority, a Republican Senate, and a Republican President be assured that McMorris Rodgers will neither co-sponsor nor vote for any sort regulation of weapons of war. She will, instead, work to make weapons and items of warfare like silencers easier to buy, carry, and brandish, just like she did with the bills she lauded and voted for in 2017 (See here and here.)
If you wish to have action on closing the gun show loophole or regulating the ownership and sale of advanced people-killing technology far exceeding people-killing capability of the the fully automatic weapons we already regulate, then the only way is to vote McMorris Rodgers and other Republicans out of office. Otherwise prepare yourself for more “thoughts and prayers” and “my heart goes out to the victims and their parents”—and no action. Either of her (CMR’s) primary challengers this year, Natasha Hill or Ann Marie Danimus, will work on suitable legislation that McMorris Rodgers in congenitally incapable of even considering.
