Bryan Miller is decrying Vince Fumo, who, despite being a corrupt Philadelphia machine politician, was supportive of gun rights. But that’s hardly news. What interests me is this quote from the letter:
Fumo can brag about the dollars he brought to Philly, and his political pals may praise his prowess. But they ignore the untold millions spent on law enforcement, emergency care, long-term rehabilitation, incarceration, and more – on both sides of the Delaware – to combat Philly’s overactive illegal handgun trade.
So money spent on law enforcement and incarceration won’t have to be spent if we just pass more gun control? The criminals are just going to go “Oh well, they made guns illegal. I guess I’m going to need to put in the application to work in that Day Care Center.” No, sorry. Criminals will ply their trade with or without guns, and given that the most violent among them already deal in drugs, which are completely contraband, I find it difficult to believe they won’t acquire guns anyway.
Plus, I don’t know what Miller’s complaining about. We’ve already well established on this blog that Philadelphia is spending virtually no money on incarceration when it comes to people who violate the gun laws this Commonwealth already has. Does Miller want to advocate that creating more gun laws doesn’t mean we have to spend money for police to administer those laws, and spend money to arrest and incarcerate people who violate them? If that’s what he thinks, what’s the point? I think we all know the answer to that question.
The sad thing is that the NRA worked with the Feds to prove that cracking down on gun offenders early through the possession laws works. They did it first in Richmond then in Philadelphia with Operation Cease Fire during the Rendell Administration. It worked and worked well.
Philly’s resident prosecutors never learned though. Cease Fire was implemented as a federal program because they couldn’t get the city to prosecute. Once the program moved on after proving it’s point, the city didn’t pick up their slack. And the crime rate gradually went up as the new thugs weren’t prosecuted and the old thugs got out of prison.