I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Cleveland. You’ve got to respect any city that stands by its sports teams year after year despite such a history of mediocrity. Yeah, there have been spurts of greatness, but not enough to really rally behind, and yet Cleveland stands by its teams.

I’ve got to respect that.

What I don’t have to respect, though, is when a local official jumps on a tragic incident to try and boost his profile by pushing an anti-Second Amendment agenda.

A Cleveland mother of four children was caught in a crossfire in front of her Collinwood neighborhood home, and all she was trying to do was a catch a ride with her husband to work.

…

The Cleveland husband said one of the stray bullets pierced both of his wife’s legs, causing significant bone and artery damage that doctors told him could take up to eight months to heal.

“Next thing I know she’s on the ground screaming because she got shot,” the husband said. “Yes, four shots, and I guess that fourth one hit her.”

…

Cleveland Collinwood, Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, said he’s well aware of the ongoing gun violence issues, and said he plans to meet with the 5th district Cleveland police commander this week about increasing police presence in his ward.

Conwell said better state gun control laws are needed and he hopes Cleveland will invest in more money into Shotspotter gunfire detection technology, to cover all crime hot spots throughout the city.

“We have state lawmakers and state senators who know that we have to regulate these guns, we have to do it from down state,” Conwell said. “Cleveland has tried to push so many tough gun laws, but it’s the State of Ohio that has to make a change. We need to set up more Shotspotter technology, so when guns go off, the cameras will hit, and we know exactly where the shots are coming from.”

Now, there are just a few issues with what Conwell said.

First, we don’t know how these people obtained their firearms, but it’s likely they obtained them through some kind of illegal means. Either they stole them or bought them from someone else who did, which means there’s really no amount of gun control that would actually stop them from committing horrible acts like this.

Next, let’s talk Shotspotter for a moment.

Conwell wants the city to have Shotspotter. There’s just one problem, namely that Shotspotter is an absolute trainwreck. Does Cleveland really need that kind of thing on its plate? Not really.

But for someone like Conwell, that probably doesn’t matter.

Obviously, I don’t know the guy, but the way he jumps in here and starts talking about gun control before the facts are even in, we generally know what’s going on. He’s making sure he hits all the right buttons so he can move on to bigger and better things. He’s trying to make a name for himself so he can leave the local level.

Whether he actually cares about this poor woman or not, he’s trying to leverage this incident to make a name for himself and to move onto state office. That’s just straight disgusting.

Especially since he’s pushing for things that we have no reason to believe would have done anything at all to stop this awful tragedy.