Gun Violence in Philadelphia

How many people have died this year? Do you know how many of those deaths occurred in Philadelphia? How about how many of those deaths were due to gun violence? Just these few questions made me want to figure out solutions on how to stop these things from happening so frequently. Like myself, I know most of the readers want to know how many gun-related deaths occur each year:

82% of all homicides are gun-related
The most deaths due to gun-violence was 356 in 2006

Many solutions have been put forth to try and stop the amount of crime that occurs in Philadelphia, such as police patrolling certain areas of the city with high crime rates. From 1997 to 2016 the crime rate in police patrolled areas dropped 37%, but the number of officers we have in our city as slowly decreased from 247 officers per 100,00 residents to only 217.

With this decrease in officers, the crime rate has begun to rise once again, this is problematic because the gun violence isn’t only taking away parents from their children, more children are being taken away from their parents. There has been a multitude of children shot or wounded this year. In fact, there were 6 kids wounded or killed in the month of November due to gun violence.

#LLZY

I lost one of my close friends this year due to gun violence, he was gunned down in front of his own home in South Philadelphia. He was only 15 years old and he lost his life because people think it is okay to solve problems with guns and its due to the easy access of guns, also the environment around the children and adults wielding these weapons which make it seem like using them is the only response to a situation.