Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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The grim statistics hardly do justice to the mounting toll of gun violence in our city: 562 lives lost last year and another roughly 1,800 people who were shot and survived.

In 2021, the city reached a bleak milestone in notching a record number of homicides. Now, the question city officials should be asking themselves is: How do we keep it from happening again in 2022?

Philadelphia is trying to do many things that broadly fall under the umbrella of gun violence prevention. In 2020, the city rebooted the anti-crime strategy known as focused deterrence in a program called Group Violence Intervention in an effort to engage would-be shooters. The Office of Violence Prevention continues to expand its street outreach program, and the city’s last budget committed $68 million in new anti-violence spending.

In January 2019, city officials released what they called “The Roadmap for Safer Communities.” Mayor Jim Kenney also holds a briefing on gun violence every other week, and both the Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office are all-too-eager to report that they are doing their jobs well — and that they have the data to prove it.

And yet, nearly 1,100 people have been killed in our city in the past two years…

At the same time, basic city services that can help reduce instances of gun violence — such as opening libraries and fixing street lights — aren’t being fulfilled.

Philadelphia Inquirer in A new year requires a better plan to tackle gun violence crisis

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38 COMMENTS

  1. “Opening libraries and fixing street lights”.

    The answer to our problems has been in front of us all these years, who knew?

    • Well maybe more criminals would be distracted by the lure of the libraries if the city had bothered to fix the damn street lights.

      • I had a similar thought. More libraries might not do much but certainly more and brighter street lights have tended to reduce crime a tad in other locales. Whether it would work in Philly is another story but it certainly is worth a try and if it only means a 10% reduction in shootings, hey, that’s 100 fewer people shot this year.

    • Gangbusters rarely show up at school. So, opening libraries are the answer? Fix the streetlights, then they get shot out. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

    • We have a really HUGE library here in Kennesaw, that has got to be the explanation for our low murder rate. It couldn’t possibly be the law that requires every household to be armed, or how many people carry on a daily basis.

  2. Well, the FIRST thing you need to do is stop calling it “gun” violence! If you’re not gonna call it what it is, you’ll never fix it!! All we keep hearing is BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!

    • Demoturds aren’t ever going to term the violence by its correct nomenclature….Defective Citizen Violence, aka Demoturds Useful Idiot Government Plantation Dwellers.

  3. Yeah, I can hear it now, “Man, if only there was a library where I could join a book club, I wouldn’t want to kill those guys on 42nd.”

    • It makes perfect sense to people like them so deep into their political bubble, that they can no longer see the forest for all the trees blocking their view…

  4. So, the Philly City Council identified bullet-proof glass as a cause of crime and racism. Apparently, wherever bullet-proof glass was installed in stores, that is where the crime was. So, the Council decided bullet-proof glass caused, loitering, public urination, and violence. Getting rid of the bullet-proof glass would solve those problems. Besides that, the glass is racist. It appears predominantly in minority neighborhoods.

    Just Duck-Duck “Philadelphia bullet- proof glass ban”.

    It seems to me the gangs in Philadelphia are less dangerous that the city government.

    • “Just Duck-Duck “Philadelphia bullet- proof glass ban”.”

      That explains quite a bit.

      It’s a lot like those cities that ban a bullet-resistant barrier between the front and back seats of taxi cabs. They claim the do it because they don’t want out-of-town visitors to get the impression their city is violent.

      A typical Leftist government response; they have no problem sacrificing the lives of taxi cab drivers, lest someone get the impression there might be a violent crime problem.

      That demonstrates the level of contempt Leftist Scum have for those they govern. You gotta crack a few eggs to make that tasty ‘Leftist Utopia’ omelette, don’t you know… 🙁

      • ban a bullet-resistant barrier between the front and back seats of taxi cabs.

        ever see a cop carWITHOUT one of these barriers? THEY have the guns AND the bullet proof barriers. We the Peons get neither.

        Makes a whole lott sense, that does.

      • The same for what I believe goes on at a lot of major universities in the Union. At least here in Texas I know of a few universities that refuse to arrest students for breaking the law. In the mind of the administrators lower/no arrests suggest there is no crime at the university, hence, parents funding the education cost won’t shy away from sending their children to the school. In reality the crime is there, people get hurt, and the admin tries to hide the truth.

  5. libraries:
    “An 87-year-old woman was sexually assaulted by a 14-year-old boy who carjacked her at knifepoint, police said Wednesday. The incident took place at a book drop in the Waukesha Public Library in Wisconsin…”
    maybe if there was no library there grandma wouldnt have been forced to blow a criminal thug in her car with a knife at her throat

    • A damn shame granny didn’t give her dentures some exercise by her biting off whatever was forced in her mouth… 🙁

  6. Libraries would suggest that the cretins can read…

    A better, cheaper idea than libraries might be to open up some inner city shooting ranges so the punks could learn to shoot and hit only the dude they were assaulting rather than bystanders a block away. There must be plenty of vacant buildings downtown that would be suitable backstops. Maybe even set up a few stations that would mimic car and truck windows for rests, both driver’s and passenger side.

  7. Notice that all of their “solutions” involve spending more money and increasing the size of the government. The original problem never gets solved, so we must increase spending again.

    • Dude,

      Exactly!!!

      “We got no answers, so, let’s make a big show of spending money, sloganeering, and smiling for the cameras. Then, when it don’t work, we’ll say ‘We didn’t spend enough money’. Our constituents are dumb as rocks; as long as they get their food stamps, they are ours.”

  8. Sure, but don’t bother to actually hand some real consequences to those who are committing the violent crimes. Blame a lack of libraries or blame the hardware used or complain about something being racist. But, don’t blame the criminal for their crimes.

  9. The first and most critical step is to stop using the term “GUN VIOLENCE”. No gun has ever been violent. No gun has ever harmed anyone.

    Only people are violent. Unless you start from the premise that you are dealing with “HUMAN VIOLENCE”, anything you think of is doomed to failure.

    After that the focus on violence being a human thing, rather than an inanimate object thing, leads you to the repeat offenders. The gang members, the career criminals. Focus on taking them out circulation and the engine of violence loses it’s most prolific instigators.

    I’ve no idea what the thinking about libraries is, but I’d be willing to listen.

    The streetlights thing, well yeah, sure, why the hell not. Light has always tended to scatter the cockroaches!

    • If I drive down a road where most street lights are out, my gun is in my hand, and I’m taking the shortest route to outta town.

  10. Wouldn’t it be easier to shoot someone under a streetlight?
    Seems to me that they would be a easier target than if the target was standing, say in the darkness.
    So , no,,, ban streetlights in the big cities.
    And library’s just plain suck. It’s where all the homeless & stinky people go to sleep & get warm & annoy EVERYONE.
    How about this, when you catch a shooter, keep him or her , try him or her, then put them down like the scum that they are. Problem solved.

  11. Wait, I just had a flash of inspiration! What if, just hypothetically, we actually arrested people who committed crimes, charged them with the APPROPRIATE offenses (including ALL ‘sentence enhancement’ charges), gave them a fast and fair trial (due process, counsel, etc.), and IF CONVICTED, we . . . sentenced them appropriately, and sent them to prison to serve their sentence out IN FULL??? Hey, we’ve tried everything else, and the “just let them walk” approach of the Soros DAs has achieved the entirely-predictable result, so . . . what about just enforcing the effin’ laws???

    Now, if you want to talk about prison reform, I’m all ears. The way we’ve run prisons is NOT calculated to “rehabilitate” anybody – and SOME perps are capable of rehabilitation. That’s a great policy discussion. I, for one, would like to see us put a stop to the horrific rate of rape and sexual abuse in our prisons. Rehabilitation makes sense, so long as you remain aware that many of the people sent to prison are not capable of rehabilitation.

    Then, once you have FULLY served your sentence, you are released back into society with ALL of your rights (yes, including voting and RKBA). If you are rehabilitated, and served your sentence, you deserve it. If you are subsequently convicted of ANY felony, you go back in for the rest of your life – if once wasn’t enough, you’re too stupid to be part of society (kinda like dacian).

    Even dacian the stupid should be able to wrap his tiny mind around that.

    • Hey dint wunna dem pawl a TISH uns recently declare, wiht much fanfare noise, attention that reading books and livaries are RAY cyst? If so WHY put more public money into them?

  12. Some how I can not imagine a gang member giving up a drive by shooting chance for the opportunity to check out “The Cat In The Hat” from the new library.

    In case any gang members are reading here- ‘Thing One’ and ‘Thing Two’ get away with it.

  13. From previous reports of Philly’s new “mayor” and chief prosecutor they are NOT interested in any REAL solutions to the crime issue. The DA is wont to spring nearly everyone free before he even gets to a cell to occupy. Some of them have been rearrested on a brand new crime within hours, or maybe a day or two. Revolving doors do not STOP traffic. They facilitte it.

  14. I used to use the library as a refuge. Then I was assaulted by a homeless guy in the library.
    They vote Democrat. Let them enjoy the mess they created

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