Posted on 05/04/2006 10:33:49 AM PDT by BorisTheBulletDodger
May 3, 2006 - Fifteen-hundred guns put on display in the formal reception room at Philadelphia City Hall. If you guessed that these guns were used in crimes, you'd be right. Lawmen want to add one more gun to the collection. The instruments of destruction that have been stealing the soul of this city were brought to the very heart of City Hall for all to see. And what a sobering sight it was. Hoping to trigger an intense political argument for tougher gun laws in unison with other cities, the city put on a dramatic display of what this is all about.
If you thought they had a weapons problem in Iraq, the city wants you to look at what's going on in Philadelphia. There are 1500 weapons that were confiscated by Philadelphia police since January. And we're not even half way through the year yet.
Councilman Darrell Clarke(D)Philadelphia: "It is clear that we have found the weapons of mass destruction. They are here and unfortunately they are on the streets of the city of Philadelphia."
There the weapons laid in sharp contrast to the ornate City Hall reception room. Assault weapons, street sweepers, the ones with boxes next to them are guns that have been linked to homicides.
Sylvester Johnson/Phila. Police Commissioner: "And these are the weapons that the police come in contact every single day."
It was Mayor Street's idea to display these weapons in such fashion to dramatize the severity of the problem.
Mayor John Street/(D) Philadelphia: "The proliferation of guns is completely and totally out of control."
Only last week in New York, Mayor Street joined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and 13 other mayors from across the country to target illegal guns and violence in American cities. They also plan to target efforts in congress to limit cities' right to access and use gun tracing data, a valuable tool for law enforcement.
Street: "We're not gonna relent until we have better cooperation out of our state government and federal government."
Philadelphia officials concede it is a longtime political argument that has gone nowhere because the city does not have the power to legislate gun control, only the state legislature and congress can. Those bodies have been pressured intensely by a gun lobby that spent 280 million dollars last year alone to fight tougher gun laws. A lobby that argues that guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Street: "People are a huge part of the problem."
That much, Mayor Street and others concede. But they point out the other part of the problem is the easy availability of guns to people who in years past would have settled their differences with a fist fight or other non-lethal ways.
Gene Blagmond/Philadelphia FOP/Lodge # 5: "We had 30 thousand Americans killed by guns last year. That's a problem and if we don't do something about it, it's gonna happen again this year."
That is the problem, that is the message, and those are the solutions being offered by Mayor Street and others to help address what is happening in Philadelphia and other cities like it. Clearly, it will be a serious uphill battle, but Mayor Street points out, so was the battle to permit gaming in Pennsylvania, something that some also thought would never happen.
(Copyright 2006 by Action News. All Rights Reserved.)
Yep, more gun laws will solve the problem. /s
Yeah, guns couldn't commit crimes without 'em, you moron!
Mayor Street... what a pathetic joke it is that such a slimebag was ever elected to any position in the USA.
Blame the guns. God forbid we blame the American justice industry or the criminals.
I propose we being to Philadelphia and display every kid who is an uneducated, unemployable gangsta' doofus because
of the POS Phily schools. What a stirring sight that would be! The problem would be in finding any place big enough. And of course, they'd all be bringing their own guns...
Have there been 1500 criminal prosecutions since January? In not, why not?
Have the punks and/or gang-bangers who possessed these 1500 weapons been incarcerated? If not, why not?
It's a quagmire, we should bring our Policemen home NOW!
UN_BEE_FREAKIN_LEAVE_A_BULL!
It's the city of BLUE brotherly love, we all know that.
OK....there are already 25,000 gun laws on the books in this country and I'd like to know what they think they can put in law # 25,001 to stop all gun crimes?
Duh. The brain power demonstrated with that comment is "staggering." I suspect the also goes around talking about "gun violence." Some people are just absolute pinheads.
£5 says 100% of these guns were illegally obtained/owned
Yup, fifteen hundred guns and I don't own any of them; I'd say that was a crisis.
It's election time for the Democrats. Time to trot out their favorite dead horse.
People are the totality of the "problem" you blithering imbecile!
I checked the figures from 2001. Over HALF of the deaths from firearms were suicides. Barely 1/3 (11,300) were homocides.
Assume ~15,000 non-suicide fatalites per year means that about 0.00005% of the US population dies from non-self-induced firearm activity.
Doctors kill a lot of Americans each year (225,000 -- http://www.mercola.com/2000/jul/30/doctors_death.htm) and automobiles are involved in killing more Americans (~40,000/year) than guns do.
But facts don't matter much to the gun grabbers.
If that's where the WMD is we should send in SEALS, Rangers, and the 101 Airborne (for starters).
Street said a mounthful when he said "the brudahs and the sistahs are in charge'.
How about the pictures of the criminals who used the guns?
Symbolism over substance alert.
Sylvester Johnson/Phila. Police Commissioner: "And these are the weapons that the police come in contact every single day."
Um... what about the scumbags who used them!? Why not put the freakin' criminals who wielded these guns on public display under glass like this instead?
I cannot comprehend a psyche that vilifies an innanimate object while reducing its user to an incidental factor.
Reminds me of the imbecilic show Maine put on last year of dramatically and publicly cutting up guns used in crimes.
"The instruments of destruction that have been stealing the soul of this city..."
Well I'm glad they went the straight reporting route on this, instead of being inflammatory.
I'm sure there were photographs of the criminals who actually committed the crimes on display also.
</sarcasm>
Maybe if Philadelphia had more than 3000 police, it might be able to get a handle on its ridiculous gun crime problem. New York City has 35,000 cops. No surprise it has less crime per capita than Philly. Despite having possibly the highest personal wage and business taxes of any major city, Philadelphia cannot seem to find the money to hire a decent sized police force.
My soul must have been stolen long ago; I have at least 14 guns and all 14 have killed fewer people than Teddy Kennedy's Olds.
. . .
There are 1500 weapons that were confiscated by Philadelphia police since January.
Wanna bet that there is some 'double counting' going on there, as well as more than a little hyperbole? If there were such a thing as an "inquisitive journalist", they might inquire into where those weapons came from, and whether they were all actually used in "crimes". You should not be taking the Mayor's word for this - he is not a neutral observer, and neither are the police, and the typical modus operandi of gun grabbers is to lie in order to advance their agenda.
How many of those confiscated guns were legally owned?
How many of those weapons were confiscated where the only crime involved was possession of the weapon itself, as opposed to having had the actual weapon brandished or fired during the commission of a crime? Were there only, say, 100 actual crimes committed with those guns, but along the way the police came across and confiscated a cache of 1400 guns in a single operation?
Also, how many of those confiscated guns were confiscated in error, where the accused has been exonerated, or will be exonerated, or where the accused has not yet been tried, and so there may have been no crime connection whatsoever?
BTW, what authority does Mayor Street have to raid the police department's evidence room for a political show-and-tell (or, for any other reason for that matter)? If I were a defense attorney representing any individual charged in any crime related to any of those confiscated weapons, the first thing that I would challenge is the chain of custody of the "evidence", after it has been tampered with by Mayor Street...
Too bad we don't have such a thing as "inquisitive journalists", huh...
I'm pretty sure the Philly murder rate peaked the year before Harrisburg made the city issue CC permits.
It not a gun crisis. It a crisis with the mean and stupid people. A gun crisis is needing one and not having it.
Well said. Like a fire extinguisher, you don't really need it until you do. And then, nothing else works quite as well.
If politicians were serious about curbing ALL kinds of crime, they would do everything they could to encourage law abiding citizens to carry a firearm with them at all times.
Keep in mind though, no politician ever benefited from a problem solved.
Doesn't the Constitution have something to say about gun ownership? I thought it did, but perhaps I'm mistaken, as these elected officials certainly must understand that document more than I do....
Yep, the police see guns waltzing down the street on their own every day, shooting at people and shouting slogans such as "Death to all people". No way was there a person envolved in the handling of these terrible insturments of crime!
Thinking like this dates back to the early days of firearms. At one time the Catholic church deemed rifles as evil because demons were able to hide in the grooves of the rifling and grab the ball on the way out of the barrel and make it hit its target. There are even incidents on record where guns were hung and burned and the users let go because the users were considered under the influence of an evil entity. This is all on record and can be researed but I am not going to do it for you.
Stupidity about firearms has been with us always and the underlying cause is an elite ruling class(politicians in our case and patricians in the past)who think they may be harmed by a firearm in the hands of a disgruntled citizen.
Post number 33 correction:researed= researched:)
WHERE ARE THE ARRESTS???
Nothing but a dog-and-pony show. Ben Franklin is doing RPMs in his grave.
Aren't these the same folks who think a Winchester .22 caliber rifle is an assault weapon?
I'd think there was nothing of much value anyway.
Police officers per capita, 2002, for the 10 largest cities in the US.
Chicago 47.34
Detroit 46.09
New York 45.94
Philadelphia 44.59
Houston 27.09
Dallas 25.05
Los Angeles 24.15
Phoenix 21.73
San Antonio 17.96
San Diego 17.12
It's a shame I live so close to this hell hole. Inanimate objects are always to blame here, it's never the trigger puller's fault.
I want to know how many of those guns are legally registered to the person who actually used it as a tool in a crime?
I bet it's under 5%.
Correction, that is police officers per 10,000 residents.
I am pretty sure it is many of Mayor Street's ghetto constituents, that are stealing the soul of the city, not some pieces of metal. Nah, that makes senses. Lets just continue to the middle ages where everything was blamed on ridiculous superstition. Instead of confiscating and displaying guns, if you confiscated and displayed criminals, (including the mayor) on a gigantic scaffold, it would reduce crime. But the superstitious liberals banned logic long ago.
Factor in the Justifiable homicides.
Where I live in far southwest Knox Co., TN we probably have a gun to people ratio of about 2:1, but nobody's had his soul stolen and none of us has gone on a mass murder rampage. Also just look at small rural towns during hunting season which are regularly overrun by grubby, gun toting hunters--how many of those townsfolk have had their souls stolen by the evil guns brought in by the hunters?
ping
I submit this to be put in the running for "Most Ignorant Statement of the Year, 2006"
Like Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, for instance?
and who's to say the '1500 weapons' were all firearms? could have been butterknives and sharpened spoons for all we know.
This would be laughable if it these people weren't serious. Do average people even take the time to analyze statements like this? Guns are "stealing the soul" of the city...The problem isn't that young people are growing up in a moral vacuum with little or no parental guidance, and therefore have no respect for the law, for others, or for themselves. No, it's those evil guns that are the problem.
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