Why is violent crime so bad in so many of our communities?
The news media and anti-gunners would claim that it's because we have lax gun laws and anyone can obtain a firearm with the flutter of their eyelashes or something.
That argument doesn't fly when violent crime dropped after Bruen and also dropped as states liberalized concealed carry laws. If more guns on the streets resulted in more crime, we'd have seen it, and we didn't.
No, there's something else going on, and my money is that at least part of it is how the criminal justice system does such a poor job of taking people off the streets when they get arrested.
Remember those trying to end bail requirements? Well, Indianapolis might not have done that, but they did get quite a lesson in what happens when problem people are returned to the streets.
A teenager armed with a machine gun and making threats to others was arrested twice by Indianapolis police because he managed to throw away his weapon in a pursuit.
Sunday, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department says an armed male wearing a facemask was flashing guns in a crowded area downtown. Police were told he was carrying a backpack to conceal the guns.
Officers spotted the suspect, later identified as 19-year-old Ajon Hall, walking into a parking garage. A short foot chase followed, but Hall was caught by police. Before he was arrested, police say he threw the backpack 30-feet down between two buildings.
“At the time, without being able to retrieve the backpack, officers only had enough probable cause to arrest Hall for resisting law enforcement,” IMPD says in a press release.
A fire department team was able to get that backpack and found what they described as a "machine gun conversion device and a high-capacity magazine."
When detectives tried to charge Hall with what they'd found, they learned he'd already been released.
Lucky for them, after he was released, Hall began making death threats to people he knew. A license plate reader found Hall and pulled him over. He was arrested without incident. While searching the vehicle, another firearm was found.
So now Hall is facing multiple felonies.
But the kick in the butt is that he was already back out on the streets.
I get that the cops didn't have enough to charge him for the weapon that night, but the fact that he was released almost immediately after meant he was back on the streets and able to threaten people.
Now, he didn't act out on those threats, thankfully, but he clearly had the means to do so. That's downright terrifying.
Look, I'm a libertarian at heart. I believe in freedom above all else.
Yet our Founding Fathers had no issue with bail requirements. There's nothing in the Constitution barring them, and that's likely for a reason. They understood that some people need to be held or for there to be some kind of surety for good behavior. Bail does that.
The bail reform efforts that took hold pre-pandemic likely contributed greatly to the spike in violent crime we saw in 2020, and that is slowly declining as many places roll back those feel-good, do-bad policies.
Stuff like this happens more in those places, and it's stupid for it to happen at all.
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