All hell broke loose Tuesday at a Baltimore City Council meeting as the legislative body discussed a hotly-contested mandatory minimum sentencing law for criminals who get caught with illegal guns. Police were called and two men were arrested as activists pushed back against the measure, which has been billed as a desperate attempt by city officials to curb Baltimore’s skyrocketing homicide rate.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the city is on pace to surpass 300 murders for the third year in a row and could easily top 400, a string of violence that’s beginning to rival the bloodbath in Chicago. Before 2015, Baltmore’s annual homicide rate hadn’t topped 300 since the ‘90s.
The Baltimore Sun reports Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said the city doesn’t have an issue with law-abiding gun owners offing people, but rather previously convicted criminals who obtain weapons illegally. To make matters worse, more than 60 percent of criminals who were caught with illegal guns in the past year-and-a-half have had their sentences suspended, despite the city's record homicide rates and local politicians' touted love for stricter gun control.
In an effort to discourage criminals from carrying illegal guns, the all-Democrat city council met Tuesday to debate a proposal for a mandatory one-year prison sentence for carrying an illegal weapon. Do not pass go, and do not ask to leave early.
To be fair, many in Baltimore, including the city’s liberal mayor and Democratic state Sen. Bobby Zirkin, have voiced support for the bill as a shot-in-the-dark effort to address the city’s uncontrolled violence. But despite being a fairly common-sense measure that should delight any genuine supporter of gun control, the proposal was met with heavy resistance from many in the heavily Democratic community (which swung 85 percent in favor of Hillary Clinton in last year's election), along with several city council members who’d generally be on the anti-gun side of the fence.
Why? Well, apparently, because it’s racist. It seems the city's chronic murder problem has landed many left-leaning politicians between a rock and a politically inconvenient place, torn between their love for gun control and their devotion to urban minority communities and criminal justice reform.
Take Councilman Brandon Scott, for example, who said he’s generally a fan of gun control but has argued against the bill – not because he thinks it wouldn’t work, but because it may disproportionately affect black criminals. Scott said, according to the Baltimore Sun:
“We know mandatory minimums have been specifically shown to overwhelmingly impact poor black people, and in Baltimore we know that we have an unfortunate abundance of poor black people, particularly poor black men who have already been impacted by mandatory minimums,” Scott said. “We have to figure out how to make sure that those violent repeat offenders who feel comfortable carrying guns are being punished, but at the same time we cannot have things that are going to make things worse when you’re talking about the grand scheme of young poor black people in our city.”
Democratic Councilman Ryan Dorsey also came out against the bill, calling it “bad policy.” So did council members Kristerfer Burnett and Sharon Sneed.
The bill, which has yet to be voted on, was eventually amended to apply only to second-time offenders – meaning you only get one crack at blowing someone away with an illegally obtained gun before you get sent to the pokey.
It’s interesting that so many liberals are heavily in favor of sweeping gun control laws that restrict a law-abiding citizen’s right and reasonable ability to obtain firearms – but not, apparently, a sensible measure targeting criminals that, as a natural consequence, might land a black man in jail. Such blatant duplicitousness only further shows many anti-gun pushers on the left aren’t genuine in their efforts to curb gun violence at any cost, but rather on whatever political pandering may be expedient at the time.