There are, in fact, 76 seized guns in the big parade. According to the baltimoresun.com, Baltimore police confiscated all the weapons on display during the last ten days, swelling their illegal arms cache to 1,164 weapons. So far this year. All the usual suspects attended the pop-po’s annual illegal gun show-and-tell: Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein and the unidentified local head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. At some point in the pistol and pony show, Bealefield Three Sticks forgot to mouth the party line . . .
“It certainly is impressive,” he noted, shaking his head. “It’s menacing, threatening.”
But in reality, the city’s top cop was thoroughly unimpressed.
“We’ve all seen tables like this before,” Bealefeld said. “I’ve seen bigger tables. I’ve seen smaller tables. I’ve seen more guns.”
The commissioner basically admitted that the media show timed to the six-month mark of the year was a repeat performance. It proved, he said, “that we still have a hell of a lot of work to do.”
I see trees of green . . . The paper was quick to point out why Bealafield didn’t sing What a Wonderful World.
The 44 nonfatal shootings in June was the fewest for the month since the department started keeping track in the 1970s. What nobody said was that it’s an achievement when the city averages 1.5 shootings a day . . .
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake picked up a black 9mm Glock. She praised her federal partners and noted that despite the tough fiscal times, “we will continue to ratchet up the effort to go after illegal guns.”
Never mind the Mayor’s ability to exercise the financial discipline needed to create a prosperous city, where potential gang members can find alternative employment. (Ignoring her predecessor’s financial, uh, irregularities.) One wonders about Rawlings-Blake’s trigger disciple. THIS is what they invented YouTube for. Only not, in this case. Talk about a damp squib.
Frankly I think taking away guns from the bad guys is a good thing, even though akin to bailing out a ship with a gaping hole below the waterline. From the same article:
<blockquote cite>Despite the show of weapons, Bealefeld wanted to talk about something other than what he described as the “proverbial smoking gun.” He talked about the gun registry, a list of 425 people who live in Baltimore and have been convicted of gun offenses.
Cops routinely knock on their doors, much as officers do to check up on registered sex offenders, “so that they know that we know who they are.” It’s a way of trying to keep track of guns that proliferate in some city neighborhoods.
The idea is to not just arrest people and take their guns, but to find out where they got them and how they were going to be used. That kind of intelligence, Bealefeld stressed, has helped drive down the shooting and homicide numbers.
Just glad to see all of the outlaws guns taken away. The way I see it, if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have the guns.
Comments are closed.