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Lawmakers Are Caught Between a Rock and a Tough on Crime Place
The choice between high rates of crime or high rates of incarceration is no choice at all.
A perfect storm of crime appears to be descending on the U.S.
It isn’t the result of some diabolical plot; there is no evil mastermind behind it. It’s simple math:
What do you get when you take 18-months of living through a pandemic; add lock-downs, plus a great deal of uncertainty and fear; then throw in social unrest and the most contentious, and unusual, election in living memory?
It isn’t a rhetorical question: We are all in the process of finding out. And it doesn’t look too good.
The pandemic, lock-downs, unrest and election may not even be the worst of it.
The past 18-months have also seen historic gun sales. As these sales have included a great many first-time gun buyers- likely responding to a decreasing police presence in many larger cities, rising crime and the potential for gun-control legislation ushered in by the Biden Administration- more Americans are armed than ever before.
There is also every indication that we are on the cusp of a major mental health crisis in America. Mental health services, including in-patient drug and alcohol treatment programs, like other elective medical…