In York, a city overrun by guns, a boy lost his dad. Lives depend on halting the violence, the headline at yrd.com proclaims. Despite the “overrun by guns” and bloody shirt waving come-on, the article is a relatively fair and balanced look at the city’s gangland firearms-related homicides. As the Brits would say, it starts as it means to finish . . .

As Kenyetta Redman’s son [above left] gets older, the questions get harder.

The boy, who turned 3 in February, will ask questions like: Big Jordan’s my Daddy?

Yes, she will tell him.

How come he can’t come play with me?

Redman will try to joke with her son. He has to be up in the sky, she says, to watch the moon, the stars and you. If he leaves, it’ll be dark outside, she says. We’ll never be able to see where we’re going.

The young boy lost his father before he was born. Jordan Breeland, 21, was fatally shot on Oct. 15, 2013 — a death that police and prosecutors described as part of a feud between rival York gangs. Breeland was associated with the Parkway gang, prosecutors said.

His death was one of many in York County that involved at least one illegally possessed gun.

Setting aside the obligatory heart-string pulling lead, the bottom line here is the same as it wherever American “gun violence” rears its ugly head (in any statistically relevant way): gang bangers are doing the shooting and there’s no stopping them from getting guns.

It’s that last bit that the gun control advocates don’t/won’t/can’t admit. How could they? If they did, their argument for civilian disarmament would disappear. Well here are the facts:

A look at 38 shooting deaths in York County from 2013 through 2016 found that, in at least 21 cases, one or more of the alleged or convicted assailants was already legally banned from possessing a gun at the time of the shooting death.

The analysis did not include unsolved cases, ones in which a law enforcement officer was the shooter, and ones in which the shooting took place years before the death.

So 21 out of 38 shooting deaths in York County — just over half — were committed by people banned from possessing guns. Felons, I’m thinking. Gang members, too, I bet.

Short of locking up convicted felons for their previous conviction (crazy idea I know), how do we stop them from getting a gun? And what about the other half of shooters who weren’t legally prohibited from keeping and bearing arms? Assuming they were also gang bangers, that’s a problem too . . .

The illegal use of guns is tied up with other issues, including drugs, education and poverty.

And illegally possessed guns often change hands so many times that it can be nearly impossible to find out who directly provided the shooter with the weapon.

The majority of the article covers the chances of various unconstitutional gun control laws making into law. Thankfully, the odds are slim. Better yet, the man leading the local government, York City Council President Michael Helfrich (above), has his head screwed-on straight:

“As long as there’s demand, there’s going to be people finding ways to get illegal guns into our city,” Helfrich said. “So to me, the best thing is to do our best to reduce the demand.”

Amen! And good luck with that.

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40 COMMENTS

  1. “In York, a city overrun by guns, a boy lost his dad. Lives depend on halting the violence.”

    Yah, BUT GUN-GRABBING DOESN’T.

    “Our F’d up stutter-steps and leaps towards making tyranny work the way we want it to means we have to spread our evil POS (D) gun control around the Country and the world ” – POS NYC

    What the President said, yesterday at the UN, about Venezuela, is true about NYC

    ” the problem in Venezuela is not that Socialism has been poorly implemented, but because Socialism has been faithfully implemented.”- President Donald J. Trump, Address to the UN General Assembly Sept. 19, 2017. He stressed that from the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever Socialism or Communism has been tried and adopted it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. The President is determined to stress to American and the world that Socialism is a curse and failure to prosperity, freedom and the security of the world. (http://americaoutloud.com/president-trump-slams-socialism-un/)

      • I THINK:

        That there is a thing LIKE socialism (BUT NOT), that exists, that most Americans buy-into, as it benefits “America” and thereby, American. It is thus: When you visit large Federal parks, you want the roads to look like the rest of America, people need to live there to maintain them and those people need mail / utilities / etc. That takes an obversely-weighted distribution of the Nation’s wealth.

        I think Trump is for those types of things that make America monolithic and homogenized.

        I don’t think Trump is for POS evil socialism as proscribed and prescribed by the evil POS (D) and some rinos.

        And from your previous posts, most would think you wouldn’t bitch about socialism no matter who was selling it.

    • first death threat I got happened in York, 1985-86 (?). Telephone msg, back in the day when there were answering machines. City Detective buddy of mine came over to my office said, “I get these all the time.” You?” Nope. “You’d better get armed, buddy. Gun store right down the street. Give owner my card. PA’s got a LTCF. Go to Court House and get one. I did. Expedited. One week. Call came from some scumbag high on drugs secondary to a brain injury. So, it’s not just the dopers, bangers, boogers, greasers, but altogether, the “assholes.” York has gone down the shitter. 🙁 🙁

  2. “As long as there’s demand, there’s going to be people finding ways to get illegal guns into our city… …So to me, the best thing is to do our best to reduce the demand.”

    Nailed it. If you want to reduce “gun violence” you have to go after the reasons that violence exists. Those reasons are directly tied to the black market and gangs.

    The solutions to this problem, unfortunately, have to be multi-faceted and some of those facets are “racist” at this point because of the theory of disparate impact. Others ruffle the feathers of the “law and order” types while yet others bother the teetotaler brigade.

    Until these reality is faced nothing useful will be done.

    • You can legalize whatever you want. These violent criminals will still be violent criminals.

      They’ll just find something else to traffic in illegally, regardless whether the good or service is itself also available through legitimate businesses. Illegal drugs don’t turn gangsters into gangsters any more than guns turn them into murderers.

      • So, what then? Keep doing what we’re doing that doesn’t work and claim that “at least we’re doing something?” like the antis?.

        I’ve posted a significant set of steps to deal with this before, a set of steps ranging from educational reform to actual penalties for bad behavior that are enforced and I’m not going to do it again. I am however sick of people blathering about how nothing’s going to change because they’re scared of actual freedom and unwilling to do the hard work the unscrew a series of systems that create the fertile ground for this fucked up situation to fester in the first place.

        I’m also sick of the government shredding the Constitution as soon as the word “drugs” comes up and supposed “patriots” clapping for it like trained seals. They love that shit right up until it’s their ass getting SWATted, their dogs getting shot for no reason or they’re the ones standing in front of a judge trying to explain how having a bit of cash on hand doesn’t entitle the government to take their possessions without due process and then spending a small fortune to get back half their stuff.

      • Jonathan,

        It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. You have to step back and look at the totality of what government does to “help” and then look at why it actually causes and perpetuates the problem.

        Let’s look at just a few things:

        1. Minimum wage laws. They’re supposed to help right? But they don’t. When the government tells you, a business owner, that you must pay everybody a minimum salary that actually hurts. Why? Because it distorts the true market for labor. If Johnny B. Cool walks in off the street and wants a job, that’s great. That means rather than be on the street being a banger he wants to better himself. But the problem is that Mr. Cool has ZERO skills. But that’s ok. As the business owner say I want to pay him $5 an hour for a period of time and help him acquire skills. If Mr. Cool shows himself to be apt and teachable then he’s worth more to me. His labor helps me out. But Mr. Cool with ZERO skills is obviously not worth $15 off the street. So rather than hire Mr. Cool I’m going to spend my $15/hr labor money on someone who has SOME skills. So now Mr. Cool can’t find a job because he’s been priced out of the labor market. Not by the business owner but by the government trying to “help” him.

        2. Child labor laws. The government wants to “protect” kids from nasty evil greedy people who would exploit them. So it mandates that “children” can’t work. Well that also has the side effect of not letting them learn skills. Again, perhaps the business owner could or would find use in hiring a 10 or 12 year old to run errands or put stamps on envelops or a myriad other things. And perhaps he would find that $2/hr or something is what that child’s labor would be worth to him. Once again, the little child is now not out on the street looking to be a banger nor is he sitting at home in front of the TV playing video games, he’s learning skills and becoming a productive member of society – and learning at an early age. In fact for a lot of children working would be a much better use of their time rather than squandering it in state-sanctioned “schools”. But by “helping” the government is actually hurting children by not allowing them to work.

        3. Drug laws. The government wants to fight the “war on drugs”. Why does there have to be a war on drugs? If Johnny B. Cool wants to sell crack and heroin on his block how is that any different than Sally B. Wise wanting to sell hamburgers on hers? Sounds like entrepreneurship to me. But the state sanctions Sally selling burgers, while simultaneously demonizes Johnny selling crack. But there’s a market demand for both crack and burgers. So now Johnny, rather than forming a corporation or LLC and hiring workers to sell his product to his market, has to get a gang and promise cuts to his fellow gang members and rather than innovate and be competitive in a true market now they just have to be more ruthless and cunning than the competition in the black market. So rather than spending money on advertising why your crack store is better than your competitor’s crack store they’re spending money on tooling up so they have more firepower to protect their turf. So rather than stopping drugs all the government is doing is actually creating the problem.

        And these are just three examples. The examples are many. Basically wherever government is involved to “solve” a problem or make it “better” they are only creating it or making it worse. If they’d just get the heck out of the way freedom and liberty would truly solve the problems.

    • whats that saying? something along the lines of “for everyone complicated problem there is a solution that is quick, easy, and wrong”

      • No, far from it. I’ve posted the steps to solve this before and noted that it will take at least two decades and involve A LOT of hard decisions like actually fixing the educational system and locking up a ton of people in a situation that will certainly be decried as “racist” so that the kids being born today have a chance.

        I never said it was easy. Also, IMHO, none if it is wrong. If you actually valued freedom and not some form of faux freedom where you foist your opinions on other people via the legal system you wouldn’t find it wrong either.

  3. I live near York. My cousin is a York city cop. York is garbage. You know why there is so much crime in York? Drugs. My small rural town has opoid problems but no where near the level of violence of York.

    Yeah I dunno, I read that article and basically that ladies whole story boils down to I let a loser cum inside me…

      • As an army medic/paramedic I still find it just friggin crazy that people use fentanyl recreationally. It is fantastically powerful. It makes morphine look like a jello shot. It’s the kind of thing that makes paramedics pass out and fall down if they touch it with their bare hands. That’s not an exaggeration, that happens. I’ve had patients with limbs missing and guts hanging out, fentanyl lollipop, and it’s all good bro.
        Then again, I once had to medevac an Afghani patient, (he died) that mixed scorpion venom with heroin. At first I thought it was some kind of street name; “Scorpion Venom”. Nope, dude milked the poison sack, mixed it with heroin, and shot it up. Cause, you know, that Hindu Kush High needed an extra kick.
        People are weird. Everybody looking for a way out.

        • DHS says fentanyl is high on the list of potential terrorist threats to water supplies, public pools, eateries (where you used to only have to worry if they washed their hands), schools, homeless, recovery houses, the military. . .
          https://www.dhs.gov/keywords/fentanyl

          Don’t know if any/ how much of that’s a real possibility but it makes me want to hunt people. And, by “hunt people” I mean all means, all seasons. I would skull gig a terrorist if he got any within a few states of people I care for.

        • ” It is fantastically powerful. It makes morphine look like a jello shot.”

          Oh, yeah, it’s a nasty one.

          There’s an analog (similar chem. structure) of Fentanyl out there that makes Fentanyl look tame.

          Carfentanil is *10,000* times stronger than morphine. A dose the size of a few grains of table salt can be lethal.

          It’s suspected it was used in that Russia theater terrorist hostage incident a number of years back. Used by the *Russians* in a gas form to knock out the terrorists, it killed a bunch of the hostages along with the terrorists.

          Oops.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carfentanil

          Worse for the DEA is that the precursors (“building blocks”) aren’t a particularly difficult synth for someone with basic organic chemistry bench skills, and the recipe is available on-line.

          We are in a new dangerous era of big business in illicit recreational pharmacology…

        • The legal opiods are being controlled to the Nth degree by the government. Government run health care has rules set by politicons, not doctors.The illegal herion isn’t enough to go around for all those that are hooked on opiods, including those poor young people who have chronic pain. Doctors usually believe those that are older, but a young person who has been hurt and the hurt doesn’t turn off will always look for partial relief that only opiods will give. The only way out for them is suicide, which has been going on since people got hurt. Either you healed or you didn’t.
          Add that to those who are hooked because they have self prescribed opiods for fun, mental help and those that are traded in “white slavery” and there is a demand that doesn’t stop.
          Fentanyl is cheap and when added to the mixture of opiods(be they oxycotin, codine, vicodin, morphine, or opium – also know as “tar herion”, the many synthetic opiods, or even real herion), it gives it a short time boost that the users might like. I suspect that the effects do not last as long, so they will have to use sooner, which makes profits go higher.
          The users are not shopping for fentanal per se, they are just living the day to day life of an addict and will do what it takes not to be sick. These people are not pleasure seekers, they are tied down hand and foot to the life that they stupidly chose or that chose them. It takes a lot to get someone to want to be clean, if they are in pain. People that have money and people that have nothing can end up in the same place – never wanting to make that choice.

    • “…that ladies whole story boils down to I let a loser cum inside me…”

      That pretty much sums up a lot/most of this issue.

      And now, i have to clean the coffee off my monitor. :^)

    • What are odds of getting a new women’s movement going in these ghettos?
      “Don’t bang a ganger” or something…
      I’m reminded of a historical precedent where the women refused nookie to the men until they agreed to stop fighting.

      Yeah, I know. Stop laughing… as if these women would stop spreading for their suppliers…

    • Drugs, huh? Hmmm…..so if somehow the drugs were removed from the scene, or perhaps legalized so the profits weren’t enormous, then all of these blood thirsty barbarians running around in gangs would instead beat feet to the local community college where they could finally set their lives on a safer and more normal path? Maybe take a cooking class, possibly pottery? Gangland violence is caused by lack of federal funding for midnight basketball programs? Grow up.

      Every last single person here knows EXACTLY what the problem is. No one wants to say, though, lest they bear the wrath of the sanctimonious, virtue signalling hive mind. It applies to everyone, regardless of political party affiliation or none.

      • yep, it’s racism, and the evil (D) ensure that these people will never be equal (because if they were, they wouldn’t have to “demand equality”).

        Until they wake up and raise their kids to believe that they are at least as equal as the Asian gang kids who shoot the sh_t out of each other but nobody has to suckle the way down man teat of the evil (D) to be sucker poster children for the POS (D) communist tyranny machine doing gun-grabbing, they are never going to get anyone to want to equate themselves with them.

        Boom. True story.

  4. In York, a city overrun by gangs of violent thugs, one of those violent thugs knocked up some chick but got killed by another violent thug before his child was born.

    So another child has to grow up without his violent thug father. And I’m at a loss to say how that’s any worse than a child growing up WITH his violent thug father.

  5. Despite all the sugary violin playing, this boils down to gang bangers shoot’in other gang bangers in a city over run with gang bangers. Hard to feel sorry for the actors here as literally everyone is making bad decisions or hanging out with bad actors or both.

    • Stupid people doing stupid things in stupid places is a good predictor of a bad outcome. (H/t John Farnham)

  6. Tell the kid the truth,Your daddy was a criminal thug who in the process of his chosen profession got himself killed,end of story.

  7. Australia reduced guns since the mid/late 1990’s its gun murder rate falls 52%
    US increased guns since the mid early 1990’s, its gun murder rate falls 59%

    Hmm. Cleary NOT a causal relationship whatsoever. What did they both do?
    Australia increased incarceration rate by 240%, US increased it by about 260%.

    • I believe that it is the percentage incarcerated, not the percentage of increase. The US has a huge percentage of the population in prison and those that make money supplying the needs of the prison are always wanting to build new prisons. The US needs to deal with the countries with the highest percentage of these felons have citizenship and build prisons there(private if need be), staff them with guards from the same country under US rules and these guys will do anything to stay out. Eastern Europe, Latin America, ans Asian prisons are hell holes. Shipping them to their own country and using US rules(no Sunday markets or prostitutes or drugs and alcohol) would be unbearable in those countries for prisoners.

      • “I believe that it is the percentage incarcerated, not the percentage of increase.”
        Not quite possible. You simply can not have over 100% of the population in prison.
        I can’t vouch for the 240-260% increase, either, but that may be for lack of trying hard enough.
        The simple fact it, though, that if you make both the chances of being caught, and the punishment if caught, high enough, crime will go down. That’s just part of human nature.

        Another part of nature is that clicking on “Notify me of follow-up comments by email” won’t work. Still. And no explanation of why seems to be forthcoming, either.

  8. I feel sorry for all the little kids there. Growing up in that “society” is almost a guarantee they will turn out the same way and very possibly die at an early age from lead poisoning.

    What is the cure? Probably none feasible. They are a product of conscious decisions and laws pushed by the left. I don’t say democrats any more, they are communists masquerading as the democrat party.

    • The cure is, indeed, feasible. It’s just not palatable.
      We need to understand, first, that the current situation can’t continue. The death rate connected to gangs is just too high.
      Next, we need to understand that we already have the means to put a dent in that rate, in the form of current laws. We don’t seem to understand yet that RICO laws are actually designed to handle this sort of crime activity. What stops us is our pre-occupation with race. Because most of the gangs are either black or Asian, we somehow think it’s racist to connect the gang members’ race with the crime activity, and that’s just stupid, but for some reason the left continues to lionize the race-baters who feed us this load of claptrap.
      Then, we need to understand that medicine often tastes bad. Yes, applying the laws we have now will mean a lot of people will get locked up. A lot of children will grow up without fathers (in the black community, that’s the norm now, anyway). We need to understand that that is not society’s fault, but rather the fault of those who made the choice to break the law. Will it be expensive? In the short run, yes, but far less so in the future, both in terms of money and society in general.
      Can we do this? Yes, we can. Will we? Probably not, because it forces us to make hard choices, and if history shows us anything, it’s that people do not like to make hard choices.

  9. Remind me again why our rights need to be curtailed because the lower life forms are unable to exercise agency?

  10. Its not a gun problem.

    Thems city problems.

    Why don’t we have gang violence out here in central PA?

    Cuz we don’t put up with that bullshit.

    Grouping mass people together and giving them relief to live off of creates a hostile breeding ground for bad things to occur. If they were too tired from working all day and too busy making a life to just hang around and hate each other there wouldn’t be “gang violence”.

    Anyone who has had to cram multiple families into one home can tell you, without personal space, anger and resentment breeds like bacteria, the more dense the living area, the more intolerant of each other people become.

    PS.

    21 is not an adult man, 20 year olds are still children in the grand scheme of things. I won’t sacrifice my rights because some kids are angry at the world for not handing everything to them.

  11. Honestly, I don’t even care about gun deaths anymore. In places like Baltimore and Chicago the statistic is something like 90% of the people murdered have past criminal records. Really, I hope we have MORE murders. Let the scum kill more of the scum. I hope the criminal bodies pile high enough so that we can build a wall around these garbage cities and never have to see the likes of their criminal population spread.

  12. Violence is not about gun laws.

    Mobs of people were extirpating other groups long before guns were even contemplated. In fact, even in the relatively recent Rwandan genocide in most of the genocide was purportedly committed with machetes.

    Guns just make it easier for bad people to do bad things, and make it easier for good people to defend themselves.

    The worst combination is a regulatory scheme which prevents the law abiding from obtaining or bearing guns and yet poses no real barrier to bad people obtaining guns….such as every big US democrat-controlled city and the many places with much stricter gun laws that America have much higher murder rates: Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Jamaica and many others.

  13. “As long as there’s demand, there’s going to be people finding ways to get illegal guns into our city,” Helfrich said. “So to me, the best thing is to do our best to reduce the demand.”

    Two separate issues, but certainly the first cannot be solved until the second has been accomplished … and the second will only be solved when “the pain of same exceeds the pain of change”.

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