Police Oversight St Louis
St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)

With many prominent government officials exhibiting a flagrant indifference to violent crime, it’s getting harder for anti-gun politicians to pretend that their gun control schemes are anything other than a means to harass law-abiding gun owners. Recent incidents from anti-gun jurisdictions St. Louis and the District of Columbia further illustrate this point.

In early July, the St. Louis NBC affiliate published text messages from Mayor Tishaura Jones obtained under the state’s Sunshine Law. In a text conversation with her father, Jones expressed doubts about the efficacy of gun control laws.

According to the station, Jones texted her father, “Chicago has strict gun laws as well but that doesn’t deter gun violence.” Jones put more faith in social programs, texting, “It’s about investing in the people.”

These once-private comments are a stark contrast to Jones’ public statements and actions. Jones is a co-chair of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s front-group, Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns. MAIG, along with Moms Demand Action, are part of the Bloomberg gun control conglomerate Everytown for Gun Safety.

In this capacity, Jones has advocated for a raft of gun control measures. These include criminalizing private firearm transfers, restricting commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, and repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that prevents anti-gun jurisdictions and tort attorneys from putting the American firearms industry out of business with frivolous lawsuits.

The mayor also supported a federal “red flag” law. As enacted, red flag laws empower the government to confiscate a law-abiding person’s firearms without due process.

As NRA-ILA has repeatedly pointed out, despite having some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, the District of Columbia has exhibited little interest in prosecuting those who misuse firearms.

A December 2021 study from the federal enclave’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) found that “In Washington, DC, most gun violence is tightly concentrated.” The report went on to explain . . .

This small number of very high risk individuals are identifiable, their violence is predictable, and therefore it is preventable. Based on the assessment of data and the series of interviews conducted, [National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform] estimates that within a year, there are at least 500 identifiable people who rise to this level of very high risk, and likely no more than 200 at any one given time. These individuals comprise approximately 60-70% of all gun violence in the District.

According to the report, “Approximately 86 percent of homicide victims and suspects were known to the criminal justice system prior to the incident. Among all victims and suspects, about 46 percent had been previously incarcerated.” Further, “most victims and suspects with prior criminal offenses had been arrested about 11 times for about 13 different offenses by the time of the homicide.”

Data in a 2023 D.C. Sentencing Commission report revealed that out of a total of 5,558 MPD arrests for carrying a pistol without a license made between 2018 and 2022, 56.6% (3,146 cases) were “no papered” (“the prosecuting authority… elected not to immediately file charges in Superior Court related to the arrest”) or were closed without a conviction. Only 97 cases (3.08%) ultimately resulted in a prison sentence. The figures on arrests and dispositions for “unlawful possession of a firearm” offenses show the odds in favor of lawbreakers were pretty good, too.

Out of 2,149 total arrests made for UPF crimes in the same time period, the majority (62.6%, or 1,346 cases) were “no papered” or closed without a conviction. Of the remaining cases that resulted in a conviction and sentencing for UPF, only 14.5% (312 cases) concluded with the offender behind bars.

Sometimes an individual case can illustrate an issue better than a mountain of statistics.

On July 5, a high school social studies teacher visiting the capital from Kentucky was shot to death on Catholic University’s campus during a robbery. At least some of the incident was captured by surveillance cameras. Police announced on July 11 that they had arrested a suspect in the case. Further, police say that they have matched the suspect’s DNA to a ski mask found at the scene of the crime.

Washington, D.C. mass shooting
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Reporting on the suspect’s criminal record, Washington, D.C.’s NBC affiliate noted, “Public records show [the suspect] has a lengthy criminal history. He was arrested five times since 2019 and was convicted of carrying a pistol without a license, burglary and threats.”

The Washington Post elaborated, reporting . . .

D.C. police arrested [the suspect] during a traffic stop in 2019 and charged him with having an illegal firearm after finding a .40-caliber Glock loaded with 15 hollow-point bullets tucked under a sweater.

Court records show he pleaded guilty to carrying an unlicensed gun and was sentenced to probation, with a one-year prison term suspended. Those records show he violated the terms of his release and in 2020 was resentenced to six months in jail.

Authorities said that after his release, he continued to violate his release conditions, alleging that he failed to report to the probation office, among other issues. A hearing on those violations is scheduled for July 18.

Washington, D.C.’s FOX affiliate shared more details on a pair of 2022 incidents involving the suspect, reporting . . .

In May 2022 [the suspect] was charged after getting into a shootout with a neighbor and in August 2022, he was arrested with making threats of bodily harm to a 7-Eleven employee. He was convicted in March 2022 and released.

In the shootout case, investigators say an unregistered Ghost Gun was used. However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. essentially dropped charges against [the suspect] after his attorney argued [the suspect] fired at his neighbor in self-defense. Charges were dropped in June, but a trial date had been set for July 10 — five days after Emerson was killed.

Targeting so-called “ghost guns” was purportedly so important to Mayor Muriel Bowser that in 2020 the District of Columbia enacted “Emergency Ghost Gun Legislation.”

The recent episodes in St. Louis and Washington, D.C. make clear that decisions to push gun control have little to do with public safety. Gun control offers unscrupulous politicians and their supporters a way to deflect from the repercussions of their own woeful mismanagement while often targeting the constituents of their political rivals.

 

This article originally appeared at nraila.org and is preprinted here with permission. 

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42 COMMENTS

  1. In other words, for Democrats it’s better to scapegoat the law-abiding than prosecute a favored constituency.

    • Why not? The scapegoats are so easily bullied and put up with all of it and more. It’s not like they’ll ever do anything about it. They won’t even vote out the people scapegoating them because they’re afraid of looking like meanies.

    • Everything you read above is a feature of the system in those places. At the risk of beating this dead horse, the criminal element is being exploited against the population of these places for political gain. Why are conservatives not getting this, I don’t believe the NRAILA is this stupid. Here in commie Jersey the ANJRPC gets it and they are NRA affiliated. But not other gun org will say this part out loud, WTF?!?

    • want to reduce crime?…try reducing the criminal population [by putting them away for awhile]

  3. Gun Control is the easiest agenda for a Gun Control History illiterate to fall for hook, line and sinker. The primary blame for such stupidity goes to so called Gun Rights orgs. for their failure to speak up and Define Gun Control as a History Confirmed Agenda Rooted in Raciam and Genocide.
    Failure to speak up is pathetic when Gun Control zealots have dissected, lied and torn the Second Amendment apart to garner Public Support. There is no fight fire with fire and there lies the problem.

    • Lock up the problem 1 or 2 % of the population that commit most of the shootings and keep them locked up .

    • You said that already.

      Is Deb the ding-bat your wife? 😉

      • no…was on wrong page and didn’t realize it. using phone right now, and it switches pages when on this site don’t know why browser doesn’t like this site.

  6. Control, control, control… OF YOU. This is why we have a 2nd Amendment. But the 2A does nothing if you’re not willing to put pin on primer on tyrants & JBT’s!

  7. good news…The judge presiding over Hunter’s case todsy did not accept the plea agreement, questioning its constitutionality.

    • Hunter Biden?

      I’ll never vote for him again!

      In fact, I think he should be impeached.

      What’s that you say, he’s just a private citizen who screwed up his life with drugs? Well then, why all the hoopla for someone who has no impact on my life whatsoever, seems a little silly.

      Oh, this is all about pursuing a political agenda, got it.

      • “Oh, this is all about pursuing a political agenda, got it.”

        Liar69er lies again.

        If you approve of a two-tiered justice system, then your political agenda is being fulfilled.

        If you believe that Hunter Biden did not receive preferential treatment that provably, no ordinary citizen would receive, then your political agenda is being fulfilled.

        If you believe that justice was done here, then your political agenda is being fulfilled.

        The lies that you tell yourself, are the most damaging lies of all, because they prevent you from seeing the truth. And you’re all right with that.

      • No one really cares about Hunter. Whistleblowers have testified that the DOJ stepped in to keep them from following the money. Everyone knows it leads back to the Big Guy that H was collecting money for.

        You cheered when Papadopoulos got jail time for fibbing to the feds during an investigation started under false premises. Those same feds lied and even falsified documents during the course of their fraudulent investigation. You laughed when none of them got jail time. You said you were throwing a little party for yourself to celebrate Jan 6ers being punished. And here you are defending the son of the most powerful man on the planet. Look at yourself. You’re a fraud. You hope the powerful aren’t held accountable. You cheer when the little guy gets screwed over. You stand for nothing other than your team.

  8. Same old Right Wing bullshit.

    Preventing criminals and psycho’s from getting guns in the first place is better than letting them kill people and then locking them up. It’s not rocket science.

    Red Flag laws, Safe Storage Laws, Gun registration, Universal Background Checks and severe restrictions of weapons of war have reduced mass murders and homicides and gun crime astronomically in all Industrialized Civilized Nations for decades. Its about time the U.S. became a civilized country and passed all these laws on the Federal Level.

    • “Preventing criminals and psycho’s from getting guns in the first place is better than letting them kill people and then locking them up. It’s not rocket science.”

      So why don’t you want that to happen instead of trying to remove a constitutional right from the those law abiding (e.g. not “criminals and psycho’s”)? I mean, its not rocket science to be able to distinguish between the law abiding and “criminals and psycho’s”.

      “Red Flag laws, Safe Storage Laws, Gun registration, Universal Background Checks and severe restrictions of weapons of war have reduced mass murders and homicides and gun crime astronomically in all Industrialized Civilized Nations for decades.”

      100% false, period.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1136Ou7p8M

        • and also, if you want to stop “criminals and psycho’s” from harming people then why do you endorse the use of ‘No Guns’ zones that are proven to do nothing but attract “criminals and psycho’s” (not only with guns but wit other things as well) because of the abundance of defenseless prey legally guaranteed for “criminals and psycho’s” by law?

        • dacian, we know your BS is to aid the removal of constitutional rights and implement a tryanny, just as it is with Miner49er.

          Its difficult to bring about an ‘overthrow’ of a country from within if there is a resisting armed population.

          This is what you are really aiding and wanting to happen…

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QveeRbsrYKQ

        • dacian is communist politically and ideologically and actually. He does not recognize the U.S. Constitution as legitimate but rather something the left-wing communist can exploit to overthrow a country from within.

          Its a typical communist tactic … exploit the rights under a country’s constitution to conquer from within (in this context, e.g. first amendment exploitation). In terms of rights, the purpose is to create and propagate overall false ‘narratives’ and ‘conditions’ designed to gain control over rights and weaken moral constraints and the justice systems (e.g. generate strife and division and polarizing ‘factions’ pitting them one against – for example, left-wing policies for ‘justice reform’ and de-funding police, advancing trans ideology to indoctrinate children to raise an accepting generation, ‘cancel’ culture, supporting ANTIFA, BLM, Trans genocide false narrative, etc…. to increase violence and generate fear in a population and overwhelm the resisting population). This is used to to further a goal to eventually emplace an Anacro-Tyranny with a ruling elite ruling by fiat while still saying they are a ‘democracy’ while moving the country into socialism (although they control the rights within turning them into ‘privileges’ then eventually do away with them) (e.g. Bidens executive orders to bypass congress and have his agencies create defacto unconstitutional law trying to do this and every democrat politician and anti-gun person, basically, state by action and word their purpose is to basically make the right a ‘privilege’ they control and to do away with it), and the ruling-elite are going to ‘fix’ everything so the population starts to accept’ the ‘security’ the state offers. After the Anacro-Tyranny is emplaced, the country is moved into ‘socialism’ (which is simply a version of communism) then at some point after that the communist totalitarian state rises and the country over throw from within is complete.

          Its a Karl Marx and CCP playbook.

          Opposing or different view points and discourse for those, and expressive speech, are one thing. But propagating overall (or overall false) ‘narratives’ and ‘conditions’ intended to aid removal of a (constitutional) inherent unalienable right is an entirely different thing. The founding fathers didn’t let it happen, did not intend for that to happen. The founders would have never allowed that an ideology (e.g. left-wing/liberal) propagating overall (or overall false) ‘narratives’ and ‘conditions’ intended to remove an inherent unalienable right, and in fact they did not tolerate such and even warned against letting it happen.

          dacian has exceeded the bounds of opposing or different view points and discourse. He clearly has an agenda to propagate overall (or overall false) ‘narratives’ and ‘conditions’ intended to be used to aid removal of an inherent unalienable right. He should be ‘de-platformed’ (banned) here at TTAG.

    • IDK what sort of drugs you’re on, but your full frontal gaslighting and commiecrat talking points tells me a lot about about what sort of communist you are; I would like to extend to you, free of charge, a helicopter tour of your choice: Left coast, East coast, or Gulf coast.

  14. typically libatard stupidity, how convenient that you wacko dacko ignore the fact they are not prosecuting the criminals to get them off the streets.
    no criminals running around = no crime from them.
    derp.

    Data in a 2023 D.C. Sentencing Commission report revealed that out of a total of 5,558 MPD arrests for carrying a pistol without a license made between 2018 and 2022, 56.6% (3,146 cases) were “no papered” (“the prosecuting authority… elected not to immediately file charges in Superior Court related to the arrest”) or were closed without a conviction. Only 👉97 cases (3.08%) ultimately resulted in a prison sentence.

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