When You Actually Address The PROBLEM . . .

You actually get results.

David Kennedy is an anthropologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. He developed a method of violence interdiction introduced as the Boston Gun Project, aka the Boston Miracle, that cut homicides in that city by 60%. In Cincinnati, gun-related homicides spiked in 2006 to 89, more than double the annual average, since 1991, of 43. People there looked to Kennedy for help.

Kennedy's research team found what he calls typical trends: They identified 69 distinct street groups, comprising about 1,000 people. Of the 89 homicides, these 1,000 people – less than half a per cent of the city's population – were connected to more than 75 per cent of them.

For any politicians in the audience, let me repeat this. Less than one half of one percent of the population of Cincinnati, Ohio, was responsible for 75% of its homicides.

So how can passing more restrictions on guns that only affect law-abiding citizens accomplish anything?

It can't. About gun bans and similar laws, David Kennedy says, "For people desperately searching for a solution, it seems like it makes sense. What they don't understand is that there are better tools that don't require law to implement, and are practically cookbook and off-the-shelf."

The first year Cincinnati's Initiative to Reduce Violence was in effect, homicides were cut in half.

Without passing a single gun law.