The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) responded to weekend shootings by noting that the city’s police force is 500 officers short at present.
WJZ reported there were seven non-fatal shootings and five fatalities over the weekend in Mayor Brandon Scott’s (D) Baltimore.
The fatalities included two people who had allegedly come to Baltimore to sell a gun and “two women were gunned down Sunday night at the intersection of Old Frederick Road and South Kossuth Street.”
The Baltimore City FOP criticized the shortage of police officers in Baltimore, as well as the lack of a concrete plan to fight crime in the city:
WJZ noted that Mayor Scott’s response to the violence includes targeting violence, “drug addiction,” and “illegal guns,” among other things.
Ironically, Baltimore has extremely stringent top-down gun controls, which were adopted throughout the state of Maryland over the past seven years.
For example, the Firearms Safety Act of 2013 banned “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines and put in place a fingerprinting/registration requirement for new handgun buyers. And the Baltimore Sun reported that since Maryland’s red flag law took effect October 1, 2018, the gun crime in the city continues to rage.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.