Recently Alarms.org released their Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities in America list. There were some surprising results and conclusions from this list. Most notably for the State of California is that no city made the list until Number 20.
Income Equality is to Blame
With recent school and mass shootings in the news, one might believe that a contributor to this rash of gun violence might be lax gun laws. However, that’s not the conclusion of this study.
According to Alarms.org, “Where there is a high poverty rate, and little opportunity to earn a decent wage, we find high homicide rates and a prevalence of other types of violent crime.”
The Results
East St. Louis, Illinois was the number one city on this list with 4,888 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The St. Louis suburb has been crime-ridden for decades and, unfortunately, is no stranger to this list.
The remaining cities in the Top 10 include:
- Darby Borough, Pennsylvania,
- Opa Locka, Florida,
- Florida City, Florida,
- Flint, Michigan,
- Detroit, Michigan,
- Saginaw City, Michigan,
- College Park, Georgia,
- Prichard, Alabama,
- West Memphis, Arkansas.
Dangerous Cities In California
The first California metro are to make the Dangerous Cities list comes in at number 20. It is Oakland with 1,734 violent crimes per 100,000 residents.
Number 44 is Emeryville located close to Oakland. It has 1,411 violent crimes per 100,000. Stockton ranks 57with 1,337 and the last California city on this list is Compton at number 79 with 1,195.
Though Compton is just south of Los Angeles, it is worth noting that LA does not appear on this list. Nor does any other suburb of the city.
The Bottom Line
Gun Control advocates will argue that there are not enough strict gun laws on the books right now, which is why we keep seeing incidents of gun violence. But these results do show us something different.
Each of dangerous cities is a poor socio-economic area. That fact has something to do with the amount of gun violence happening within their borders.
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