Are the Xbox and unleaded gas helping keep you safe from violent crime? - Response

The article first talks about how video games help. They think that since more and more kids are inside playing video games, less and less are on the streets having the chance to commit a crime. They also think that since kids are playing games like "Grand Theft Auto" or other games that involve shooting or crime, mitigate or make that behavior less severe and lead to a decrease in crime. The researchers called the phenomenon the "incapacitation effect." When you are at home playing video games, You are not hanging out on street corners, in alleys or out with your buddies getting into trouble


  The talk about removing lead from gasoline, paint, and other things I think is kind of dumb. It maybe be true but the fact that people have to come up with lead as an excuse for why people  commit violent crimes is plain stupid in my mind. But Jessica Wolpaw Reyes a college professor found a correlation between lead exposure and violent crime. According to her calculations, exposure to the heavy metal could have accounted for between 28 percent and 91 percent of the 83 percent increase in violent crime in the U.S. between 1972 and 1992. And as lead exposure dropped, so too did violent crime, falling 56 percent during the 1990s, she found.


People also thought the Roe vs. Wade and the decision of the Supreme Court legalizing abortion was a factor that influences the falling crime rate.


Immigrants were also blamed for the cause of violent crimes but it is just the opposite. Immigrants who come here usually have very good work ethics and strong families. Robert Sampson a professor at Harvard  examined violent crimes involving 3,000 men and women in Chicago from adolescence to age 25 and found that first generation immigrants were 45 percent less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans, while second-generation immigrants were 22 percent less likely to carry out such crimes.


So from this article I read it looks like there are many factors that could play into the cause of violent crimes. There will be tons of studies that go on about these crimes because there will always be violent crimes happening. There are too many people in the world for them all to be normal.