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As federal officials boasted of their efforts to fight against Crime at DC following the massive deployment of national guard troops by the Trump administration in recent weeks, they have all stressed the same statistics to prove their success: the number of weapons recovered by the police. “I am happy to point out that 105 other arrests have been processed and 12 illegal cannons have removed the streets of Washington, DC,” Tweeted the United States Attorney General last week, Pam Bondi, in what has become his daily story of police statistics. The White House also seems delighted to share these recovery statistics for firearms. Everyone, from the mayor of DC to FBI officials, seems to be suitable that recovered firearms, as well as the number of procedural arrests, communicates the effectiveness of the efforts to apply the law: they must succeed if they remove arms and lock people.
This difficult conversation on firearms is a sudden departure from the administration approach to firearm regulation in the second term of Trump. Trump has reduced the funding of the alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives office, closed the armed violence prevention office, issued a plan to reduce two -thirds of inspectors who monitor the firecting weapons authorized by the federal government and ordered the FBI to reduce the definition of who is considered a fleeting of justice. The legislatures of the republican states have adopted the laws on the “right to bring” in 29 states, which allow anyone without serious conviction or an active restriction order to own and transport unregistered firearms. Trump himself says that he supports a national law “right to carry”. The deregulation pressure was so strong that the American lawyer hard for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced in August that the transport of a hunting rifle or a DC rifle without license would only be billed as an offense.
Thanks to these efforts, the law on which many DC citizens have been arrested since the arrival of the National Guard – possession of a firearm without a license –is no longer a crime in a large part of the country. If Trump and his allies adopted a national law on the right to transport, it would not be a crime anywhere.
The differences in the “blue” and “red” approach to the possession of firearms have diverged so radically that legal sanctions can differ even in the same state. In Pennsylvania, it is an offense to wear a firearm without a license. But due to a special law which only applies to “first class cities”, it can be charged as a crime in Philadelphia, the only city in the first class in Pennsylvania and the jurisdiction where I worked as a local prosecutor for six years.
These new laws “right to transport” do not work well for the states that have adopted them. They were linked to a significant increase in violent crimes, and in particular the climbing of minor conflicts in shootings. This is the cost of absolutism of the second amendment in places like deep virginia -Western, just a few hours from dark blue DC, where possession of a weapon can always be a serious crime – at least according to Jeanine Pirro and Pam Bondi.
But beyond hypocrisy, the accent resolved on the recovery of firearms to DC is problematic for another reason. When police efforts are judged by the number of firearms recovered, the police become more aggressive, using stereotypes and racial profiling to search for people who can have firearms. Car stops and pedestrian stops are increasing, and some of these stops are claiming – based on suspicions that lead to illegal research. We already see this kind of bad judgments at DC, the more aggressive the police, the more likely it is that these stops end in police violence. These types of tactics can quickly erode community trust in the police, which is essential to resolve other more serious crimes.
Why, then, does the Trump administration praise the arrests of firearms at DC, even if the president himself supports a national “right of transport”, and firearms can cause such dangerous consequences? Policy. Most Americans promote more firearms control, and they are not interested in putting themselves in the bad herbs on the defendants have crime convictions which should keep a gun and what could have been eligible to obtain a license, but did not apply. If administration officials simply claim that those arrested with DC firearms are criminals, they may have them in both directions.
The kind of repression of the police that we see in DC, which has been described as a dragnet that lacks strategic planning, is designed to show short -term results with figures – such as recovered firearms – which make good big titles. Crime is broken down to DC – of course, it is – because there are suddenly much more law enforcement staff in the streets, which alone reduces crime. But that does not mean that this effort will produce a reduction in violent crimes in the medium or long term. This requires money and planning, offering carrots as well as sticks and investing in neighborhoods.
When the National Guard will withdraw, it will be too easy to replace the weapons that have been confiscated. And thanks to deregulation, those looking for these weapons can also travel through state lines so that laws on lax firearms in a state can mean easier access to the capital of our country.
Again, the president has accomplished an impressive sleight of hand, taking credit for having solved a problem that his policies only won: his administration worked to deregulate arms, which makes them easier to buy, then orchestrated a repression of the police which claims success by confiscating them. He convinced many Americans that armed members of the National Guard are necessary to protect us from people who carry firearms, but only in major cities. And he has achieved all of this because violent crimes in our cities continue to decrease. We should think twice before applauding the next time Pirro informs us that another pistol has been removed from streets.
