Enforce Gun Laws
Forget about the shooters or victims for a moment. Thing about everybody else on the block. Well kept homes with gardens. They matter, too. Not just for their sake but for our sake and the sake of Philadelphia. How many of you wouldn’t move if this happened where you live?
Fuck: “OMG, what can we do to help those poor shooters?!” Just help the rest of the people on the damn block. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have four people shoot on your block. It takes so few to destroy a neighborhood. And that is true even if you’re not the one shot.
Also fuck the “gun laws are racist” crowd. Say you arrest one shooter a block away with a gun. What if nobody was hit? What’s the crime? The case will get dropped. It’s why you need to go hard against illegal gun possession. All you have is criminal gun possession. It matters.
And yeah, the shooter will say, “I didn’t feel safe; The gun was just for protection.” And next thing you know the Marshall Project will make it into a whole damn boo-hoo series. And they’re not lying. It doesn’t make it right.
Imagine you and your kids lived across the street. You can’t, of course. But try to imagine. And then try to imagine some 30-year-olds involved with “nonprofit journalism about criminal justice” try to to educate you about the racist history of gun laws.
Push gun control up to the limit of the 2nd Amendment. And then enforce those gun laws. If you want to reduce gun violence, enforce gun laws. How do you think NYC reduced the number of people shot (>95% black or hispanic) by 85%? It kind of is that simple. Or don’t. Up to you.
Will some otherwise innocent people get banged by gun enforcement? Of course. But nobody who isn’t carrying an illegal gun will get banged. That’s the beauty of enforcing gun laws. Enforce gun laws. I can’t believe this is now a controversial opinion in “progressive” circles.
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If you prosecute people always for illegal gun possession, fewer people carry guns. Do you really think otherwise? And to those who meant no harm and had a gun, I’m sorry, but what were you doing illegally carrying a gun? Public safety demands strict gun laws and enforcement.
Or maybe public safety doesn’t demand strict gun laws and enforcement. Maybe I’m wrong. But I’ve picked a side: strong gun control in cities and enforcement of those laws. If you don’t agree. That’s fine. But don’t pretend you’re for gun control if you’re against enforcement.
Politically gun law enforcement won’t happen if people of the left simply acquiesce to equity arguments against it. Last year it was just a Friend of the Court brief from some public defenders. Still left-wing fringe.
It’s bad when this nonsense is mainstreamed (in “progressive” circles, that is) by a 3-part series from the Marshal Project. “Gun laws = racism” will just become accepted wisdom (as already happened with policing). The difference is unlike police, gun laws _can_ be abolished.
Let’s get back to this shooting in Philadelphia. While processing the 70-round 3-kids-shot crime scene, a new shooting had cops running to _those_ gunshots two blocks away, where a 45-year-old man was shot.
Meanwhile normal non-criminal people live here. What happens to them? First of all, their inter-generational wealth decreases. It’s not redlining. It’s guns shots.
Redone 3-bedrooms on N Frazier sold for about $106K. A 4 bedroom 2 bath around the corner on Lansdowne Ave sells sold for $145k. These are always far below Zillow’s “Zestimate.” I wonder why?
The urban institute study says one more gun murder in a census tract (much less a block) decreases home values ($24,621 in Oakland) and average credit score (9 points in Oakland).
I’d say homes on the 1500 block of N Frazier are between hard scrabble and well maintained, leaning to the latter. This is not an abandoned block. People get up and go to work. People own homes. And they’re all worth a good chunk of change less than they were worth last week.
This is the view (in 2019) the gunmen saw as they shot ~70 rounds down N Frazier. At least 3 of those 70 rounds hit people, but the other 67 still hit something. The property damage must be immense. People flee violence. And doing so isn’t cheap.
In violent areas, things vary greatly block by block. But for Census Track 112, here are the demographics of 6,442 residents hurt by their proximity to gunfire: ~93% Black, 55% poverty, $26K household income, 57% of housing owner-occupied ($91,100 value).
Using the Trace map of gun violence, in 1 mile in 2016 (top left) at least 40 shootings and 10 killed. Terrible! And then it got worse. In 2022, 139 shootings and 35(!) killed (top right). In one mile! It’s hard to fathom, as I don’t live there. (Bottom pics are top, zoomed in)
Given people shot on damn near every corner, can’t we experiment and put a cop on near every damn corner? How many fewer shootings would there be? Yes, it would costs millions. Millions that could be “invested in the community.” I would argue public safety is a solid investment.
Smith and Purtell (2007) looked at such a program in NYC. Murder down 24% on top of overall city declines. Now this program ended up being poorly managed. The tail started wagging the dog. It led to “producing stats” and the “stop & frisk” fiasco. But that wasn’t inevitable.
Operation Impact is one of those programs people talk of when they assert, “We can’t go back to those failed programs of old.” Why not? A 24% reduction in murder! Why not have a cop on every corner and make sure “productivity” is judged not by stop forms but violence reduction?
I mean it is arguably a form of “overpolicing.” A lot of poor people deserve such a luxury. And if the harms outweigh the good, if people on the block don’t want police standing there, end it. But the real opposition to effective policing comes from people nowhere near the block.
