CRIME: Murder City

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One day last week in Detroit, a lawyer in a Hall of Justice courtroom inexplicably drew a gun and pointed it at the judge and a witness. The judge was not carrying the .38 caliber pistol that he usually packs, but three policemen in the courtroom drew their guns and killed the lawyer. A few minutes later, in a luggage shop in downtown Detroit, the owner and his clerk were discovered neatly trussed and executed, apparently in a robbery. A little after that, a prominent black psychiatrist was found dead in the trunk of his car. And still later that evening, police in the suburb of Roseville came across the bodies of a pair of young lovers in a car, victims of a murder-suicide.

Since Jan. 1, there have been 187 homicides in Detroit, 27% ahead of the rate last year in the city that normally revels in records. Last year Detroit (pop. 1.5 million) had 601 homicides, or one for every 2,500 people. By contrast, Chicago, with twice as many people, had 711 murders; while London (pop. 7.4 million) had only 113.

Why is Detroit such a center for bloodletting? Police Commissioner John Nichols believes that the widespread possession of handguns is a basic cause. He estimates that there are some 500,000 handguns around, or one for every three citizens of Detroit. Nichols is backed by the studies of Dr. Emanuel Tanay, a professor of psychiatry and law at Wayne State University, who says that "Detroit is almost like an experiment in testing the correlation between the presence of guns and homicide." Tanay notes that over a period of six years, the number of gun permits tripled and the rate of homicides by firearms increased eightfold; in the same period, homicide by any other means rose by only 50%.

Police say that the surge in ownership of guns—most of them unregistered—started after blacks burned and sacked large parts of the city's ghetto areas in the 1967 riots. "It seemed like everybody went out and bought a gun," one officer recalls. Now that so many guns are handy, the argument over the kitchen table at 2 a.m., which might once have ended in a punch in the nose, has a good chance of ending with a bullet in the gut. The police log offers these samples: an argument in the Red Dog Bar, a disagreement in Cherry's Poolroom, a quarrel over the whereabouts of the money from the welfare check, an argument over rent. Narcotics were involved in 10% to 12% of the homicides; most of the victims and the murderers were black; one-third of the crimes remain unsolved. The majority of the murders continue to be the work of friends or relatives of the victims. Of 111 homicides in February, 72 occurred inside the home. And guns are used about 60% of the time.

The high homicide rate is a cultural problem as well as a gun problem. Detroit's need for unskilled labor has brought in vast numbers of rural Southern blacks and increasing numbers of rural whites. Says Homicide Inspector John Domm: "The kids grow up in a culture of aggression, the poor and the black learn to get ahead by being aggressive. People who look for the police to solve this problem are looking in the wrong direction." Meanwhile, Dr. Tanay warns that the chances of getting murdered in a gun-laden society are so great that it is unwise ever to argue with a stranger during, say, a traffic mishap.