BATON ROUGE - Gun violence has been the talk of the town in the state's two largest cities since shootings this weekend.

In Baton Rouge, two Southern students were killed in a triple shooting.  The case is still under investigation.  Tuesday, the WBRZ Investigative Unit reported detectives were working long hours to piece together what happened.  So far, one person has been arrested.  

In New Orleans, former Saints player Will Smith was shot and killed after a traffic accident.  Tuesday, police found a loaded gun in Smith's car.

The high-profile shootings left many people wondering: why so much crime?

At LSU, assistant professor Bryan McCann is trying to get to the root of the issue.

"Violence that happens in north Baton Rouge which is primarily black, primarily poor working class is sad (and) tragic, but often regarded as a norm,"  McCann said in a TV interview on WBRZ News 2 at 5:00 Tuesday. 

McCann argues the recent shootings struck unusual areas: In New Orleans, after dinner on Magazine Street; in Baton Rouge, at a south Baton Rouge, expensive apartment complex. 

"When it creeps into worlds where (people are) comfortable, I think we tend to really pay more attention to it because it violates our everyday assumptions of where violence happens, to whom it happens when it actually happens everywhere," McCann said.

Although there are numerous reasons for crime, McCann says when certain communities have been stripped of its economic base people will find ways to survive.
 
"Poverty is a much more of a predictor of crime than race," McCann, who has a Ph. D., said.  "Poverty falls unevenly in our country along racial lines."