As we were leaving Tuscaloosa yesterday morning, Natalie and I decided we really needed to pop into town to see a little bit of the University of Alabama (Roll Tide!). On our way in, I was struck by the absence of markings on pavements, yellow lines in the middle, lane markers, etc. Which reminded me of how dark it had been on the way back from picking up our bbq the night before, which of course was the same impression I had in Schenectady a couple of weeks before.
A quick check shows that despite being the home to the university -- itself the home to astonishingly gargantuan and lavish looking sororities and fraternities that pretty well define the place, outside of football -- Tuscaloosa's population is low-income even by Alabama standards, which in turn is poorer than most of America, at least in nominal terms. So it's not a rich city, and its municipal budget would appear to be strained.
Poor lighting + poor street markings all in all adds up to a sense of relative lawlessness. The individual is pretty much left to his/her own devices. Small wonder that guns are favored devices.
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