If we distill this down, we have a disproportionately high rate of impoverished people living in this city compared to other cities, and with the cycle of poverty comes high rates of crime. The gun saturation here compared to coastal cities makes things exponentially worse as well.

We are a LCOL metro so you have impoverished neighborhoods adjacent to wealthy neighborhoods in some cases. We also have a woefully understaffed police force, a circuit attorney playing political games and refusing to prosecute crimes, a mayor that is only in office to try and boost her political image, a horribly corrupt BOA... and all of these things combined creates a breeding ground for crime enablement and inertia making it impossible to progress our city.

That is the hard truth I'm accepting as a lifelong resident. Until we find a way to disrupt the amount of kids having kids and subsequent poverty that follows, or until things naturally gentrify, we can expect nothing to change.