When you have a 21-year-old, two 16-year-olds, and two 15-year-olds, carrying guns and opening fire when “two groups of young people started shooting at one another for reasons that remain under investigation,” naturally the response from the local councilwoman is to call for more gun control. Of course, it’s already illegal to carry a firearm in Philadelphia without a license, and it’s already against the law for minors to be carrying guns, yet Jamie Gauthier wants more gun control laws for these fine people to violate:

City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents parts of West Philadelphia, said in a statement Wednesday that the incident was “heartbreaking” and called on lawmakers in Harrisburg and Washington to pass gun safety laws “that will stem the flow of guns into our neighborhoods.”

Robert Stacy McCain has the story of 26-year-old Dexter Reed, Jr, formerly of Chicago and now a resident of Hell. Mr Reed:

was arrested on July 13 after Chicago cops said they found him in possession of a firearm in the 1800 block of West Warren. Police responded to a call of a person with a gun at the Windy City Smokeout, an annual barbecue event, and found Reed armed with a handgun, according to his arrest report.

Prosecutors charged him with aggravated unlawful use of a firearm the next day. Later, a grand jury returned a true bill charging him with three counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, including possessing a firearm in a vehicle, and possession of a firearm with a revoked Firearm Owner’s ID card, court records show.

Mr Reed was awaiting trial on the gun charges, and it was illegal for him to have a weapon. Nevertheless, on March 21^st, he was pulled over by members of the 11^th District Tactical Squad, at which point he fired 11 shots at the five officers, emptying the magazine, and the five officers returned fire, expending at least 96 rounds. I’m tempted to say that, after 96 rounds, they ceased firing because they were out of ammunition.

Mr McCain referenced this article from CWBChicago, but didn’t really go into this chart from that source:

We don’t know what, exactly, Mr Reed was planning to do with his firearm and it’s extended magazine, though one suspects he was up to no good. I would imagine that he didn’t actually plan on getting into a shootout with police, but, then again, if he was a budding rocket scientist, even though the photo of Mr Reed on Mr McCain’s site shows him wearing a red t-shirt with a line image of the space shuttle on it, he wouldn’t have been carrying a weapon at all. If he was another one of those unfortunate victims of the police who were just about to turn their lives around, he hadn’t made much progress in that area.

But what we do know is that there have been an awful lot of crimes, including crimes involving a firearm, being committed by people awaiting trial on a prior felony charge, and Mr Reed is just another one of those people.

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution states that “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted,” and that means that people like Mr Reed, who have not been accused of murder — suspected murderers are normally denied bail — have to be given a reasonable chance to make bail, unless, of course, your name is Cody Heron. But some form of closer surveillance, such as an ankle bracelet which can detect firearms or gunpowder, if such a thing exists, needs to be developed and used.

Mr Reed is now stone-cold graveyard dead, and given his attempts to murder police officers, I suspect that his departure from this mortal vale is a good thing. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t have come down to that, but, then again, the 117 documented (alleged) victims of (alleged) criminals awaiting trial in the Windy City shouldn’t be dead either. Mr Reed isn’t getting his George Floyd moment, despite what Mr Reed’s loving mother wants, as Chaya Raichik showed on Libs of TikTok. “He was just riding around in his car… and they killed him!” his dear mother said, even though she had to know that he had shot first at police, and that he had a firearm he was not allowed to have.

And Councilwoman Gauthier? At what point does a (supposedly) intelligent elected official come to realize that criminals just don’t care about the laws, other than in which ways they can get around them, that laws to restrict the rights of law-abiding people will not stop the bad guys?
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