On Wednesday, a 36-year-old Philadelphia man with a history of gun, drugs and assault convictions opened fire on police officers serving an arrest warrant. The gun man was finally taken into custody just after midnight.
Gunfire first broke out around 4:30 p.m., said Ross, after officers attempted to serve a narcotics warrant “that went awry almost immediately.” Once they were inside the home, a barrage of bullets forced officers to return fire and retreat through windows and doors.
More than three hours after the first shots rang out, police were still locked in a dangerous standoff with at least one gunman barricaded inside the home, trading shots with officers outside. Residents, forced to dive behind cars and hide in their homes, described the scene like a war zone: Bullets flew through the streets and wafts of gunpowder filled the air.
A SWAT team rescued the police and hostages taken by the gunman.
The usual suspects promptly took to sympathetic cable news channels and social media to wail about the need for gun control. The alleged gunman has a history littered with criminal activity that makes him ineligible for firearm ownership. Would he suddenly abide by any new “sensible gun reform” policies hoisted upon the American people? Let’s look at his history:
Public records show that he has been arrested about a dozen times since turning 18, and convicted six times on charges that involved illegal possession of guns, drug dealing, and aggravated assault. He has been in and out of prison; the longest sentence handed him came in 2010, when a federal judge gave him a 55-month term.
Hill also spent time in federal prison. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to federal firearms violations after he was caught with a Smith & Wesson .357 and later a Taurus PT .45 semiautomatic. His prior felony convictions should have barred him from owning those weapons. U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond sentenced him to four years and seven months in prison.
More recently, Hill was convicted of perjury in 2013 and sentenced to seven years of probation. He appeared before Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford Means for three different alleged violations of probation — at least two of them related to new cases, which he later beat.
In one of those cases, Philadelphia police arrested Hill in May 2014, after spotting him driving an unregistered scooter. But when officers tried to stop him, he raced down an alleyway against traffic on a one-way street and then onto a sidewalk, sending pedestrians scattering, court records say. Hill crashed the scooter and then fled on foot but was apprehended. He was charged with driving without a license, recklessly endangering another person, and fleeing police, but later was acquitted on all counts.
According to court filings, his accuser told police she had agreed to sell marijuana for Hill but then later changed her mind. When he summoned her to his house on the 6900 block of Greenway Street in Southwest Philadelphia days later, she says, she overheard Hill and an associate discussing killing her. Fearful for her life, the woman said, she called 911. When officers arrived, she fled as Hill and his associate hid the crack cocaine and marijuana in a tire out back. Investigators discovered 83 grams of marijuana.
There’s no way this dirt bag obtained his gun via legal channels with this kind of dossier because it’s illegal for him to own a gun at all. How was he even a free man? The real failure of law and the justice system is that at some point, this monster wasn’t locked up for good.
Presidential candidate Kamala Harris appeared on CNN to make the argument that more gun laws or her gun laws would have stopped this fellow from his life of violent gun crime.
“When will it stop, right? Part of my focus on what we need to do around smart gun safety laws is recognize we have to have more enforcement around gun dealers. Wolf, 90% of the guns that are associated with crime are sold by just 5% of the gun dealers in the United States. And so among the many plans that have I both in the form of executive action and also in the form of legislation, one of them is to put more resources into the ATF to take the licenses of gun dealers who violate the law. And that includes a number of things, including when they are responsible for doing background checks, not doing them.”
Harris went on media before any details were known about the gunman, but she did not want to waste an opportunity to get her face on TV. The Philadelphia shooter doesn’t buy his guns legally so mandatory background checks would not be a deterrent. The gun control movement doesn’t care about such loopholes in their gun control plans because they aren’t trying to discourage criminals from using guns they are trying to discourage you.