DA Lynne Abraham has confirmed what many of us have been saying about the gun legislation passed unanimously by City Council and signed into law by Mayor Nutter: "They are, on their face, illegal acts." She will not enforce them. Mayor Nutter’s “New Day, New Way” Philadelphia is resembling “Old Day, Old Way” by continuing the tradition of making race a divisive topic, rewriting history, ignoring real solutions to crime problems and thinking he is above the law he has sworn to uphold.

Nutter said, “Almost 232 years ago, a group of concerned Americans took matters in their own hands and did what they needed to do by declaring that the time had come for a change.”

This is a shameful twisting of history. The courageous Americans he is referencing fought the British to protect our civil liberties and to enact an equal basis of law, two actions that the legislation he signed is opposed to.
The Mayor is ignoring real solutions to crime. We have a broken radio system for police that doesn’t even work in the subways. Smaller cities than ours have GPS in police cars to enable quick and efficient dispatch to emergency calls. We also have a negative example in Washington, D.C., where gun bans still leave it with national highs in gun violence.

From an Inquirer article: “In Philadelphia, the police unit responsible for tracking guns is only now digging out of a 6,000-case backlog caused by inadequate staffing. The delays got so bad that judges sometimes dismissed cases because necessary lab work wasn't finished in time. And most of the state's 67 county prosecutors didn't file any cases against alleged straw buyers in 2006 or 2007, court records show.”

Instead of properly funding the police to handle straw buyer cases under current law, Nutter is choosing to spend money on lawyers that will be in court trying to defend the laws in the Supreme Court. Without proper funding, such legislation would only increase the backlog.

Adam Lang
06/26/2008

Article appeared in The Public Record
http://phillyrecord.com/2008/0529/letters.html
and The Loyal Opposition
http://phillyopposition.com/content/old-day-old-way-mayor-nutter-and-gun...