I'm from the UK, but was in San Fran for a weekend last year.
Did I ever feel unsafe? No.
Was it sad seeing a lot of, very obviously mentally ill, homeless people? Yes.
How to solve this? Hard to say.
Did I ever feel unsafe? No.
Was it sad seeing a lot of, very obviously mentally ill, homeless people? Yes.
How to solve this? Hard to say.
How safe you _feel_ often has little correlation to how much danger you are actually in. A lot of people are oblivious to their impending assault or murder until just before it happens to them.
Making you feel unsafe is a specific political tactic: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/nov/25/fox-news-crime...
The city is a place of both incredible wealth and incredible human misery. It’s shameful to not acknowledge this or the fact that whatever the causes, nothing anyone is doing seems to be making it better.
My wife on the other hand did not like walking the dog in the evening. More often than not she'd have some random creepy person follow her around and say weird shit to her. Nothing worse ever happened thankfully, but it was regular low key harassment for her.
We sold the place, to a single guy. We had a few couples interested, but in each case, the woman was worried about what it would be like after dark. Rightfully so based on my wife's experiences.
There is one solution that bypasses politics, bureaucracy, or having to assign people to protect things: let people have reasonable access to firearms and legal recourse in their use to defend themselves and property.
The vast majority of people are normal, decent human beings that won't resort to shooting each other at every argument. The rest would probably pursue deadly force even if they didn't have access to firearms. Yes, US has a disproportionally a larger number of those due to our culture, but the way to fix that is to let former people arm themselves and the problem will be minimized.
I hope I'm not making a straw man here, but I think your argument is that people who are going to resort to violence will find a way, even if they don't have a gun.
The thing that always gets glossed over in this argument is how much damage you can do with various weapons.
Yes, there are people prone to violence for various reasons. And yes, people, do get beat with pipes, or stabbed (both big SF news stories lately.)
But you can kill much much more efficiently with a gun. So those prone to violence, with access to guns are able to do much more damage much more quickly and easily.
Look at places like college towns where there are a lot of drunk people, and fights break out. How often do you see people being killed in these regards? These are people of all sorts of mental temperaments, under the influence, managing to just punch/kick/wrestle each other without resulting to stabbing each other, despite knives being readily available.
Even more so, for the people that could be prone to violence but of sane mind, knowing that someone may be armed can be a deterrent for them actually engaging in violence, because most of those people still have a sense of self preservation, not willing to die over someone disrespecting them in some way.
And when that one outlier person who is not of sane mind and violent enough to actually use deadly force decides to go at it, its much better that if everyone else has the means to stop him.
I was not saying that at all.
I was specifically responding to the part of your comment that I quoted, where you said:
> The rest would probably pursue deadly force even if they didn't have access to firearms.
And I was specifically addressing that point and only that point.
There is a world where normal ordinary people with a job and a place to live get guns, while people who are homeless/mentally ill/ on drugs dont.
That sort of implies that we don't go Oprah on SF where everyone and their mother gets a gun. Reasonable access means that you have to meet certain conditions, like not be homeless, have an id, have no criminal record, e.t.c.
I live in SF and it is not at all clear to me how expanding access to guns would either help or hurt the homelessness challenges in the city.
Some argue that it's inhumane to be armed when you're assaulted by someone who doesn't have full control of themselves and isn't responsible for their actions. But folks also don't deserve to die just because someone has completely lost it and is now in the process of beating them to a pulp.
Right now you’re a sitting duck, hoping that it’s someone else’s turn to get stabbed today. Ultimately you either empower law enforcement, which is not happening, or you empower law-abiding pro-social citizens, which is also not happening. The only options people have left are to either suck it up, or move.
The best thing one can realistically hope for is inverting the opportunity cost committing crime the other way, where its generally more favorable not to steal. If homeless people can be shot by security guards for shoplifting, its almost guaranteed that you would see crime statistics reduced overnight. Homeless people would be more incentivized to pursue lives closer to normal.