I think black on black homicide is a downstream effect of several different factors.

A big one is the ongoing drug war, police state and militarization of our justice system. We didn't have anything close to the homicide rate (though it's been falling) before drug prohibition. The immense cost of the drug war has had an equally disastrous result on American civil society for people on the margins, which includes a large number of urban black youth. That kind of destruction will take time to heal, but we're still treating drug use and addiction like a problem we need to fight a war against. Until we unwind that failed policy, it will be a challenge to improve black on black violence.

The real solution to crime, including black on black violence is prosperity. I have yet to see anyone in the political class talking about how black people can create long term, sustainable prosperity. I think the democrats are happy to have a large, dependent underclass of black people they can rely on votes for. I think republicans are apathetic about people they think will never vote for them.

The path to prosperity is not easy, but it is relatively well paved. We know that broken homes lead to worse outcomes, for one.

One of the biggest predictors of violent crime is something called the Gini Coefficient, which measures wealth disparity across territories. Areas with high levels of wealth disparity have high levels of violent crime. Our inner cities are cases in point. We need to improve the chances of prosperity for people on the margins, and then we'll see violent crime fall.

These two factors are interrelated. Drug war policy has hit poor people and black people the hardest. Some of that was racism, some of it was bad luck. It destroys families, which fosters worse outcomes and makes prosperity nearly impossible.