John Fetterman, a Democratic Senate candidate from Pennsylvania, can’t hide fast enough enough from his soft on crime critics. As Republican Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz criticized Fetterman on crime, the once-proud supporter of Black Lives Matter removed any references to the police-defunding movement from his website.
However, Larry Krasner, the district attorney for Philadelphia, won’t be up for election until the following year. Krasner claims that his choice to not prosecute the majority of nonviolent offenses, including theft, is “working” despite the fact that over 1,000 people have been slain in Philadelphia over the previous 20 months. Who exactly is it working for? You can tell Krasner could be sincere when you look at his track record. His approach is “working” for life-long offenders who he sees as the victims of the legal system.
According to Gallup, 72% of Americans are unhappy with the country’s present efforts to cut crime, while 80% say they are concerned about crime.
Voters are aware of the party at fault. In a recent NBC News survey, Republicans outperformed Democrats by a margin of 23 percentage points when asked which party had superior crime-fighting measures. There is no amount of sophistry that can alter it.
Democrats understand that the growing crime rates in the country are a political liability for the party, and they have a strategy to combat this. They are accusing Republicans of being weak on crime because they don’t support strict gun control legislation, using recent tragedies like the mass murders in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, as examples (and even airing advertisements to that effect).
This argument has a few flaws, and they start with Krasner’s City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia’s district attorney Krasner has reduced charges for gun ownership by 50% since taking office. This was planned, not an accident.
Krasner previously remarked, “The idea that the way you’re going to address shootings is arresting individuals for weapons is missing the point. “Arresting people for shootings is how you put an end to shootings. You address gun-related killings by solving gun-related homicides.”
Krasner is right that bringing criminal charges against shooters is an excellent approach to stop shootings. But what is the purpose if Democrats want stricter gun control legislation but Democratic DAs like Krasner refuse to enforce them? Their own behavior demonstrates that even they do not think that gun prohibitions deter crime. In reality, since only criminals would own weapons, they actually worsen crime. These regulations serve only to harass law-abiding gun owners who, unlike criminals, are more likely to uphold the law.
Democratic district attorneys who are soft on crime are wrecking cities and killing people, including Krasner. Thousands of dangerous offenders have been released from prison thanks to New York State’s bail reform rules, which result in hundreds of re-arrests each month. In addition, the Democratic-controlled state of Illinois enacted a bill on bail reform that will let thousands of violent offenders walk free and forbade police from evicting trespassers on private land.
Democrats in Washington have the money to fund police forces all throughout the nation with millions of dollars. But as long as Democrats are in charge of the district attorneys’ offices in those areas, it won’t accomplish a thing.
The United States doesn’t require additional funding for police forces. More gun regulations that Democrats won’t enforce are not necessary. It does, however, require traditional prosecutors who are prepared to uphold the law, regardless of race. Fetterman and other Democrats will have earned the general public opinion that their party is hopelessly soft on crime until they rid their party of soft-on-crime district attorneys.
