“We need to take back our city, and it needs to come back to the citizens and not the criminals,” said Shaun McClusky, former mayoral candidate for Tucson, Arizona. “Right now, the criminal element is winning.”
McClusky and others in Tucson have launched a free shotgun giveaway for citizens who can pass a background check. Toward that end, McClusky has already raised $12,500 from donors as part of his plan to arm citizens and reduce crime citywide. With more than 310 million guns already in the hands of private citizens across the United States, advocates of gun control believe that increasing the number of guns is not the solution.
“There is no credible evidence at all that providing a high-crime area with the instruments to facilitate more crime is going to have any net social benefits,” said Travis Pratt, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University. “These kinds of rhetorical devices get thrown around a lot and they’re politically popular here in Arizona.”
McClusky, like many pro-gun advocates, remains defiant, insisting that armed citizens are the key to reducing crime. “Saying guns are responsible for killing people is like saying spoons are responsible for making people fat,” McClusky said. “If someone wants to bring me the publicity for free and sue me, bring it on.”
The former mayoral candidate has teamed up with the Armed Citizen Project, “a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to training and arming residents in mid-high crime areas with defensive shotguns, for free.” The project was started by Kyle Coplen, a student at the University of Houston. There are now chapters in Houston, Tucson, Dallas, Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit and New York, with plans to expand to other cities in the future.
Crime has decreased in Tucson over the past decade, but remains higher than average for cities of comparable population. According to 2010 statistics, the last time crime statistics were published, overall crime had reached a 13-year-low in Tucson. There were 3,332 incidents of violent crime in 2010 compared with 5,116 violent crimes — including homicides, sexual assaults and robberies in 1997. There are roughly 50 homicides each year in the city of 525,000 residents.
McClusky’s plan continues a militia-like approach to curbing elevated crime rates in Arizona. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known by some as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” is in the process of training volunteers to assist police in Maricopa County.
Arpaio announced the formation of armed “school posses” in January for the purposes of patrolling and protecting 59 schools in his jurisdiction. He hopes to build a school patrol of 1,000 armed volunteers. The decision came in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting December 2012 — a massacre that left 27 people dead.
Arpaio teamed up with Hollywood actor Steven Seagal, who helped train volunteers in hand to hand combat and martial arts techniques during a training exercise last month.
Despite a history of lax gun laws, armed militias and tough on crime approaches, the state of Arizona still has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the United States. According to the U.S. Peace Index, an independent project examining crime statistics, Arizona is among the most violent states based upon violent crime and incarceration statistics. Only four states: Florida, Nevada, Tennessee and Louisiana had higher crime rates.
As groups continue to debate the merit of an armed citizenry, the United States continues to have the highest rates of gun violence of any country in the world. According to a study conducted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), there were 11,078 homicides caused by a firearms in 2010.