Paul Helmke is absolutely correct that this incident, and many like it, are horrible:
And then, on September 22, their family life was shattered by a man who walked up to their adopted son, Daren Dieter, and shot him in the spine. The shooter left Daren in a parking lot in Philadelphia, paralyzed from the neck down. Daren happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a young man simply trying to buy a late-night snack for himself and his date.
Now he’s permanently attached to a respirator.
I don’t like hearing about a family having to go through anything like that, and I hope by some miracle their son recovers. I don’t disagree with Paul that criminal violence is a a big problem, and that it can strike anyone if they are at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I can’t agree with him on how to solve the problem, because what his organization advocates simply won’t work. The scumbag who shot this young man is Tyree Bohannon:
Court records show Bohannon has been arrested three times in the last two years on numerous charges, including robbery, assault, firearms violations, receiving stolen property, and providing false identification to police.
He has been convicted only of false identification and was placed in a program for first-time offenders after his arrest last November.
So he had previous arrests for some very serious crimes, yet the DA in Philadelphia thought he was a good candidate for the ARD program, which lets first time offenders off easy.
Philadelphia’s crime problem will not be solved by taking guns away from law abiding citizens. It won’t be solved by one-gun-a-month, by restricting good people from getting concealed carry licenses, or by any of the other measures the city has been begging for in Harrisburg. Until they get tough on the criminals causing the violence in Philadelphia, the problem will continue. The measures Paul Helmke and his organization want to take will only serve to make good people defenseless against cretins like Tyree Bohannon.
UPDATE: More over at Days of our Trailers
I guess Paul (or whoever wrote this) didn’t do enough research to discover the history of said shooter. It’s much easier just to rehash his same accusations.
Let me get this straight:
The only thing he was actually convicted of was, essentially, disrespecting authority (by providing false ID). In other words, the actual harm he did to ordinary citizens was negotiable.
The guy’s been arrested before on “firearms violations”, among numerous other offenses. So, there are already laws in place that should have kept guns out of his hands, he broke those laws, and suffered… no consequences?
And yet, somehow, the remedy for this is to create more gun laws that will only make it harder for ordinary citizens to defend themselves against goblins like this? Goblins who will ignore those laws, because they know that all that really matters is…not embarrassing the cops?
Is that about right?
That is about right.
I know an arrest doesn’t equal a conviction. I don’t know the circumstances that ultimately caused charges not to be brought. But if I’m a DA, and see a case where someone is before me on a third degree misdemeanor charge, and he’s had several previous arrests over the period of several years, he’s not getting ARD. I’m sticking him with the misdemeanor count. The courts may not give him any serious jail time for an M3, but he’ll have a record a least.
As several Indiana newspapers pointed out at the time, it’s a bit ironic that Helmke is droning on about crime, considering that when he was the mayor of Ft. Wayne, the US crime rate was decreasing, while that of Ft. Wayne was increasing.
Just sayin.
Did you change blogging software recently? I just realized my RSS feed lost you somehow.
I have been to Ft. Wayne many times. A lot of them while Helmke was mayor. It was a very nice place, but only in daylight. At night one had better be hidden from the criminal element or he was “fair game”.