In York, a city overrun by guns, a boy lost his dad. Lives depend on halting the violence, the headline at yrd.com proclaims. Despite the “overrun by guns” and bloody shirt waving come-on, the article is a relatively fair and balanced look at the city’s gangland firearms-related homicides. As the Brits would say, it starts as it means to finish . . .
As Kenyetta Redman’s son [above left] gets older, the questions get harder.
The boy, who turned 3 in February, will ask questions like: Big Jordan’s my Daddy?
Yes, she will tell him.
How come he can’t come play with me?
Redman will try to joke with her son. He has to be up in the sky, she says, to watch the moon, the stars and you. If he leaves, it’ll be dark outside, she says. We’ll never be able to see where we’re going.
The young boy lost his father before he was born. Jordan Breeland, 21, was fatally shot on Oct. 15, 2013 — a death that police and prosecutors described as part of a feud between rival York gangs. Breeland was associated with the Parkway gang, prosecutors said.
His death was one of many in York County that involved at least one illegally possessed gun.
Setting aside the obligatory heart-string pulling lead, the bottom line here is the same as it wherever American “gun violence” rears its ugly head (in any statistically relevant way): gang bangers are doing the shooting and there’s no stopping them from getting guns.
It’s that last bit that the gun control advocates don’t/won’t/can’t admit. How could they? If they did, their argument for civilian disarmament would disappear. Well here are the facts:
A look at 38 shooting deaths in York County from 2013 through 2016 found that, in at least 21 cases, one or more of the alleged or convicted assailants was already legally banned from possessing a gun at the time of the shooting death.
The analysis did not include unsolved cases, ones in which a law enforcement officer was the shooter, and ones in which the shooting took place years before the death.
So 21 out of 38 shooting deaths in York County — just over half — were committed by people banned from possessing guns. Felons, I’m thinking. Gang members, too, I bet.
Short of locking up convicted felons for their previous conviction (crazy idea I know), how do we stop them from getting a gun? And what about the other half of shooters who weren’t legally prohibited from keeping and bearing arms? Assuming they were also gang bangers, that’s a problem too . . .
The illegal use of guns is tied up with other issues, including drugs, education and poverty.
And illegally possessed guns often change hands so many times that it can be nearly impossible to find out who directly provided the shooter with the weapon.
The majority of the article covers the chances of various unconstitutional gun control laws making into law. Thankfully, the odds are slim. Better yet, the man leading the local government, York City Council President Michael Helfrich (above), has his head screwed-on straight:
“As long as there’s demand, there’s going to be people finding ways to get illegal guns into our city,” Helfrich said. “So to me, the best thing is to do our best to reduce the demand.”
Amen! And good luck with that.