CRIMINAL CONTROL, NOT GUN CONTROL UPDATE

Here are two examples of criminal control, or rather the sickening absence of it

By Howie Katz

Big Jolly Times
August 15, 2019

Aaron Luther, who died in a lengthy shootout with Riverside, California police and sheriff’s deputies after killing one and wounding two CHP officers has a long arrest record dating back to the late 1980s in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. According to NBC, Luther has a history of violent crime dating back at least 25 years. In the 1990s, he was sent to prison for trying to smuggle a deadly weapon into a California jail. In1994 he was convicted of second-degree murder and burglary. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but was paroled after 10 years. After just three years on parole, Luther was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He was also found guilty of domestic violence in 2013. Luther's record also includes convictions for stalking, unlawful possession of a firearm, assault and battery, and additional domestic violence cases.

Maurice Hill, the Philadelphia shooter who wounded six cops, also has a long arrest record which began in 2001 when he was 18 and was arrested with a gun that had an altered serial number. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he’s been arrested about a dozen times since turning 18, and convicted six times on charges that involved illegal possession of guns, drug dealing, and aggravated assault. In 2008, he was convicted of escaping, fleeing from police, and resisting arrest. Along the way, he beat criminal charges on everything from kidnapping to attempted murder. Hill was convicted of perjury in 2013 and sentenced to seven years of probation, which he was caught violating three times, twice by committing new crimes. Hill was busted again in October 2014 on charges of drug possession and false imprisonment. Hill has been in and out of prison; the longest sentence handed him came in 2010, when a federal judge gave him a 55-month term for federal firearms violations after he was caught with a Smith & Wesson .357 and later a Taurus PT .45 semiautomatic.

Both Luther and Hill should have been kept off the streets until they were so feeble that they wouldn’t be able to harm a fly. But because we have hardly any criminal control, one police officer was killed and eight others wounded by these two dirtbags.

And this is how gun control works in California which has the nation’s most restrictive gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons. Instead of keeping Luther and other gun-toting criminals locked up, the state is taking its frustration over mass shootings out on its law-abiding citizens.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, instead of calling for changes in the law that will keep dangerous criminals locked up, city and state officials along with members of congress are demanding that assault weapons be banned. Just as in California, they are going after law-abiding citizens rather than the criminals.