The term "gun crime" gets thrown around a lot when the subject of gun control comes up. After all, who cares about people getting stabbed or beaten to death? All that matters is that no one does anything illegal with a gun. That's what they seem to tell us, anyway.
But the truth of the matter is that they don't really care all that much about so-called gun crime, either. If they did, they'd behave very differently.
See, the truth is that while Republicans and Democrats rarely see eye-to-eye on things, the idea of addressing "gun crime" is something they'll discuss. The problem is the focus. For Republicans, the focus is on the word "crime," which is good because even if you remove guns from the equation, bad people will still hurt others, so focusing on them makes sense.
Democrats focus on guns, which they seem to think are the root of all evil.
The problem is that they're really not that worried about guns, either. Not in the hands of criminals, at least.
How do we know this? Because we keep coming across stories like this:
It happened within seconds. A man walked up to a group sitting outside an apartment complex in Millington and opened fire.
It was July 2, 2024. Police say at least six shots were fired, and four people dodged the bullets.
Cameron Wheeler was arrested and convicted, but as WREG Investigators found out, his sentence didn’t come with prison time.
In December, Wheeler pleaded guilty to two of the seven charges — attempted second degree murder and convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
He received an eight-year suspended sentence, meaning he avoids time behind bars if he follows certain conditions.
“Our court watch volunteers were reporting that they were hearing a lot of suspended sentences,” Leslie Taylor said.
Taylor is the executive director of Memphis Crime Beat, a group working to reduce crime by better understanding the criminal justice system. They deploy volunteers to sit and watch what’s happening in criminal court and gather and analyze available data.
“We began investigating all of the cases that were disposed, meaning resolved, in criminal court in December,” Taylor said.
Not only did her volunteers find out about Wheeler’s case, but they also discovered there were more like it.
Keep in mind that Memphis city officials have been clamoring for the ability to pass local gun control laws for the last couple of years, claiming that their crime rate is so high they need more than state-level measures.
Well, it seems they do need more than that. The problem is that what they need are judges to stop putting violent people back out on the streets. It's bad enough when judges refuse to use the bail system to keep some of these people locked up, but I can at least wrap my head around that. An arrest isn't a conviction, after all.
But this guy tried to kill four people. He wasn't a first-time offender, since he was already a felon. There was no reason to give him a suspended sentence, especially because even if there are conditions to such a sentence, people like Wheeler are notorious for not following the rules.
You know, because they're criminals.
Where is the leftist outrage on this, though? Why aren't they losing their minds here when, frankly, we could find something that looks like common ground? I mean, attempted murder is a pretty serious charge, so who would really have a problem with this guy spending all eight of those years in prison, rather than walking around free?
It's hard to see this kind of thing and not think that the reason the left is so soft on criminals, particularly those who use a firearm, is precisely because they can use the crimes they commit to advance an anti-gun narrative. They want bad people shooting up neighborhoods, and they want them to do it as much as possible because you're never going to convince the American people to give up their rights unless they're scared enough.
So, they just put criminals back out on the streets to gin up a little more fear.
If cities like Memphis wanted to be safer, they could just carry out the damn sentences these people get. Instead, we get stories like this instead.
