So what should “we” do about it?

Several of the comments to yesterday’s entry noted, correctly, that people with guns can be roughly divided into law abiding citizens who own and use guns for law abiding purposes and criminals who use guns for criminal purposes.  Several pointed out, correctly, that the inner cities (of places like D.C. and Oakland) are areas of rampant disrespect for the law and hotbeds of gun violence and other crime.

I consider the state of our inner cities a national disgrace and my first thought was to write today under the question “What should we do about it?”  But that begs the questions who are “we” and why should we do anything.  “We” are the law abiding citizens who do not live in the inner city.  Let me suggest we should do something because, (1) the inner cities drain our nation’s resources and vastly increase our taxes; (2) if we could ever solve the problems of the inner cities the positive economic benefit would be substantial; and (3) while they don’t do it in great precentages, the people in the inner cities do vote and they are as reliable a group of Democrat, leftist, pro-government, anti-free-market, anti-American voters as exist anywhere (and they will be at least until they see a workable conservative, pro-free-market, anti-government alternative to what the liberals offer). 

So I guess the first question I’m asking is whether I’m right that we should care, for pragmatic reasons, if not for for moral ones.  Assuming I am right about that, what can we do to improve the situation in the inner cities?  50 years of libral programs from the 60s to today have shown that those programs do not work.  But I have not heard a well thought out and well articulated alternative, conservative plan.  What ideas do you have?