Jabari Jones: Politicizing gun violence is killing Philadelphia — literally

Five Hundred. That’s the tragic number of people who have been murdered this year in our City of Philadelphia. More than 400 of those murders came from gun violence.

Five. Hundred. Lives.

For too long, a combination of numbness and a hopeless acceptance of this crisis as inevitable has stopped us from truly reflecting on this growing death toll.

It isn’t just a number. These were real people who died. They were brothers, sisters, husbands, and wives that never returned to their families. Children woke up without a parent, and in over 27 cases, parents woke up to learn that their child would never be coming home again.

The statistics are grim. A person dies in Philadelphia every sixteen hours. A day after you’ve read this article, another person will be gone. This year, more than two thousand people have been shot in this city – that’s six shootings a day. Shootings happen even in broad daylight. People are being killed sitting in a parked car, playing arcade video games at a convenience store, or even an expecting mother bringing in presents into a house after her baby shower.

Despite the upward trend in murders, there is a growing movement to politicize gun violence, turning a human issue into a political one.

Violent crime and murder should be a universal wrong.

Once, it was not controversial or unusual for one to call for accountability after a crime was committed. Commonly, the elected officials conducting press conferences at crime scenes promised to prosecute the responsible to the fullest extent of the law.

Political factions over the course of the last four years have changed that, however. A war has been declared on accountability.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE: https://broadandliberty.com/2021/11/24/jabari-jones-politicizing-gun-violence-is-killing-philadelphia-literally/