As I was reading this article I started out thinking this is another example of people creating a problem statement to arrive at their desired solution. While this is true, I ended up laughing at ambiguous wording:
…
Beilenson said there was a 45 percent reduction in repeat offenses. He added that the biggest problem was simply the number of guns in Baltimore.
“[There are] literally as many guns as people in Baltimore, mostly in illegal hands,” he said.
We have sometimes wondered when they would get around to banning sticks, stones, feet and hands. Perhaps Beilenson thinks some hands are already banned.
In my reading of this article, it appears that what the BPD effort really did was to verify that the shadow effect of concealed carry was really the factor in reducing crime. They flooded the high crime areas with plainclothes officers. Obviously people could not identify them as concealed weapon carriers so anyone could have been an officer. There is no difference between that and allowing ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons. The bad guys don’t like to take risks either so if they are not sure if someone has a weapon or not, they will pass them up.
The author could also use some help in writing clarity. Besides the “illegal hands” comment that Joe caught, I laughed at ” illegal gun seizure tactics”. Perhaps the better statement would have been “tactics for seizing illegal guns” and really more correctly, “tactics for seizing guns from those possessing them illegally”.
Although a gun might be used in the commission of an illegal act, here is no such thing as illegal possession of a gun (unless you’ve surrendered the precepts of the second amendment). With that in mind, “illegal gun seizure tactics” would make sense, would be quite clear, and would of course apply to any and all attempts to erode the concepts supporting the right to keep and bear arms.
“BPD”: My first thought was Borderline Personality Disorder.
Most of the population of Baltimore are criminals?
If someone has a gun, then that makes them either a criminal or someone planning to be a criminal. Duh! [/sarcasm]
I’ve seen anti-gun people argue that “if the government allowed” ordinary people to own guns then the cops wouldn’t be able to tell the good-guys from the bad-guys. Apparently that is how they determined good from bad. It simply wasn’t possible for good people to own a gun. Their world view did not allow for there to be another way to determine good from bad.