Two men get into an argument at a restaurant in Adams Morgan a few Sundays ago. One pulls out a pistol and shoots the other, then turns it on himself.
Earlier that day, a few blocks away, gunfire erupted in an alley. Two men fell, both shot and wounded.
In the first week of October, D.C. police reported three homicides by gunfire. On the last day of September, cops found three men shot in the stairwell of an apartment in Anacostia; one was dead.
So far this year police say there were 2,200 cases of assault with a deadly weapon. They reported this in a positive light, as a 12 percent drop from last year’s numbers, when there were 2,499.
But if one assumes most of those assaults were with a gun, my math shows there were still 244 gun crimes a month. So more than seven times a day in the nation’s capital this year, someone assaulted another person with a deadly weapon, most likely a gun. That’s way too much.
Now comes the Fenty Administration with an Omnibus Crime Bill that attempts to stiffen sentences for gun crimes.
Fenty’s bill would increase the mandatory minimum sentence for a felon caught with a firearm from one to two years. Better, but it should have been five. A felon found with a gun who has committed a violent crime does get five years under Fenty’s bill.
More importantly, someone arrested with a gun during a crime of violence is more likely to remain behind bars with a “rebuttable presumption” the person is dangerous.
Duh! I cannot tell you how many cops have told me they have arrested someone who used a gun in a crime only to see the same person released, pending trial. Under current law, there is little penalty for getting caught with a gun, and criminals laugh at the cops.
Finally, Fenty’s bill would make firing a weapon illegally a crime with a five-year penalty. Under current law, you can shoot a weapon in D.C., pay $300 and walk.
My sources tell me Fenty’s bill was even tougher. Recommendations to establish “constructive possession,” where a gun found in a car with four people would incriminate all four, were stripped at the last minute.
Now it’s up to the city council to review Fenty’s bill and take action. Herein lies the problem: The bill goes to Phil Mendelson’s Judiciary Committee, where it could languish for months if not years.
Asked how he would handle the bill, Mendelson said he was very busy working on 24 other legislative matters. He doubted he could get to it very quickly.
To which I say — perfect. This now gives Council Chairman Vincent Gray a perfect reason to have the entire council consider the Omnibus Crime Bill. If he was willing to put Fenty’s education reform before the Committee of the Whole, why not crime?
Is there any more important city business than the daily sound of gunfire, falling bodies and blood in the street?
