The city of Philadelphia bills itself as the City of Brotherly Love. Considering the crime rate there, that “brotherly love” thing probably refers more to Cain and Abel than anything else.

Violent crime is bad there, to say the least.

So, it’s unsurprising that The Trace has looked at it. After all, they’re basically a “journalistic” organization dedicated to pushing gun control.

However, they’re better than a lot of anti-gunners. They’ll at least acknowledge when something other than gun control reduces violence, which brings me back to Philadelphia.

An unexpected knock at the door in December caught Zeem off guard. He had not been expecting the visit from a social worker, a representative from the District Attorney’s Office, a mentor — called a credible messenger — two police officers, and a mother who had lost a child to violence.

They were from the city’s program for Group Violence Intervention, and they had come to offer the initiative’s services to Zeem, whose past included dealing drugs and associating with people involved in gun violence.

“I don’t know how my name came about,” said Zeem, 27. “I wasn’t doing too bad, but I wasn’t doing too good. I was, like, stuck in the middle.”

Zeem said the group sold him on GVI because it offered what he wanted: a GED, a job, and other options to help him avoid the snares and pitfalls of life in North Philadelphia.

…

Philadelphia city officials recently announced that an independent study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania found that the program significantly reduced gun crime among participants between August 2020 and May 2022, when the GVI program contacted 276 individuals from 66 groups at least once.

The study found that, on average, gun violence associated with a group dropped by 38.6 percent after one interaction with the GVI team. The model showed the highest reduction of shootings — 50.3 percent — after two interactions; six or more interactions reduced shootings by 35.6 percent. The researchers also found that gun violence dropped about 42.8 percent after an enforcement action, which includes both arrests and lesser sanctions like higher police surveillance, bail revocation, and extended probation periods.

“The big takeaway is that GVI works, and we must continue to invest in this approach, and we will, and I hope that the next administration does the same,” said Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, who is term-limited and scheduled to leave office in January.

Honestly, this is good news.

The truth of the matter is that gun control will remain a controversial topic for decades, if not centuries to come. Yet the issue of violence in our cities, such as Philadelphia, is real. We need to find ways to address the problem that we can actually make happen.

What we’re seeing in Philly is just such an example.

There appears to be a clear link between this program and a reduction in so-called gun violence. What I would find interesting, though is the impact on other forms of violent crime, though the study apparently chose only to look at “firearm violence” instead.

Still, the idea makes sense. Get someone the education credentials to move on with life and a job so that crime suddenly doesn’t look too good.

Most people don’t become criminals for the fun of it. Sure, the lifestyle may be glorified in certain segments of American society, but that’s not exactly why many do it. They do it because they don’t think they have any options.

So, they start breaking the law.

Once the law becomes meaningless to you, though, soon all laws lose meaning. Couple that with the need for street cred, and you have a recipe for disaster. It doesn’t matter what city someone lives in, either. It could be Philadelphia or Atlanta or Chicago, some things transcend such things.

I’m glad this program worked and I hope they can find a way to expand it. The promise offered is worth further investment, it seems.

With that level of reduction, you may well never need to think of gun control again.