Design Studies - Assignment 3
Eminent Gangsters: Immigrants and the Birth of Organized Crime in America - Author - James Fentress, Published - University Press of America (1 Dec 2010)
Firstly , I decided to look for a book that explored the roots of a well known American crime activity and which would trigger the minds of other up and coming criminals in the country. I came across “Eminent Gangsters” in my local library (Whiteinch Library) back home in Glasgow. Mainly it explores the origins of the world famous Italian American gang who called themselves “The Mafia” and their saga of the first half of the 20th centuary which most of us only knew about from films such as “The Untouchables” . However , this book straightens out this story. After flash reading the first few pages a phrase from the book “from rags to riches” stood out and was made more obvious to me what the main reason behind most of America`s crime is. The book decribes how unlike a lot of gangs , The Mafias Sicilian roots are what makes them so powerful . Family is the most important of all.
Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America - Author - Gary Kleck - Published- AldineTransaction (31 Mar 2005)
The main quality of this text was the amount of references it offered . For a fairly small book with only around 500 hundred pages , it contained 560 references. It looks into Americas laws on accessing a firearms on many different levels; socially and physiologically. After flash reading most of the chapters , I was mainly interested in Chapter 4 - Defensive Use of Guns by Crime Victims . It reminded of the Bernie Goetz and the four young black male case that the text “Tipping Point” discussed in relation to crime in New York. It analyses the fact that each year about 1500-2800 criminals are lawfully killed by gun-wielding American civilians in justifiable or excusable homicides, far more than are killed by police officers. Thus showing that perhaps civilians use a firearm far too easily and that perhaps it should just be left to officers. However , it does show the important argument that even though more criminals may be dying due to civilian defence it still does reduce the number of commercial and residential robberies.
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