“He’s moving the problem elsewhere,” Christensen says. “And that works for him, but it’s really not solving anything.”

So the guy comes up with a clever way to protect his (and his neighbor’s) property from street crime, and now it’s his responsibility to ’solve’ the problem of poverty? If crackheads and other degenerate people were hanging out in and ruining Ms. Beaty’s front yard, she’d just allow them to stay there until there was no more poverty, right?
The “root social causes” argument makes sense to some extent — certainly there are causes of poverty and crime that can be addressed. But suggesting that potential victims of crime shouldn’t be able to defend themselves against it (non-violently at that!) because that doesn’t ’solve’ the whole problem is bizarre, to say the least. Unless, I suppose, you’re some activist-type whose sole purpose is to be self-righteous.
Does it ever occur to people like Ms. Beaty that one of the “root causes” of crime is people allowing it to continue?