OAKLAND / Woman dies after being shot in bed
Shanice Davis died Wednesday night.
One more person on a long list of people who will quickly be forgotten. Shanice Davis does not deserve to be forgotten though.
Shanice Davis was shot in the head by a stray bullet in Oakland on Monday night. She was sleeping when the bullet went through her bedroom wall and hit her in the head.
Shanice had a daughter — a one year old baby girl. This baby girl will now grow up without her mother. Imagine the cries of this baby as she wakes up in the middle of the night wanting the familiar comfort of her mom’s touch. That gets me mad. It gets me mad that we allow criminals to roam the streets with illegal guns and then watch as they get a slap on the wrist when caught.
It’s tragic. And all the while “Do Nothing” “Soft on Crime” Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums sits idly by doing nothing about the continued problem of guns and violent crime in Oakland.
Why won’t Mayor Dellums call for stiffer penalties for illegal guns in Oakland? Why does he allow week after week more innocent people to die? Maybe Mayor Dellums should spend more time caring about the people dying every week in his city than he does spending time campaigning for Hillarious Clinton as her special urban city advisor or whatever his title is with her campaign.
Speaking of Hillarious Clinton’s campaign. Is this really the Mayor you want advising her on how to hand inner city issues? A mayor who watches the bloodshed in his city and person after person die and does absolutely nothing about it?
The laws need to change. Those caught with illegal guns need to spend 10, 20, 30 years in jail. The slap on the wrist approach is not working. Dellums could be the perfect spokesman to push for tougher illegal gun laws. But do you know where Dellums was on Tuesday night instead of Oakland. He was in San Francisco meeting with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. A camera made PR event for a career politician.
Do you know what Mayor Dellums? While you were out there pressing the flesh and smiling for the camera with Archbishiop Tutu in San Francisco, Shanice Davis was dying in a hospital bed in Oakland.
Higher penalties don’t change crime rates. At some point, higher penalties are even counter-productive. The USA have a problem with guns. No other civilized country is so heavily armed like the US population. You know what? Guns are the reason for the many homicide cases the USA has to suffer from. The USA has a 40 times higher murder rate than some countries of Europe.
Get rid of your weapons and you get rid of the extremely high murder rate. (People will start to beat each other up instead of just killing.)
And don’t say everybody who wants weapons gets them on the black market. It’s just not true. People want what they can get easily. As long as weapons are sold legally in stores like bread, you’ll have problems.
Higher penalties won’t solve the problem, because these aren’t people that think “Hey, there’s the danger of me sitting in prison for a long time. Let’s not commit the crime!”. You’ve got a social problem (many poor people = higher crime rates – weather you want it or not), that can just be solved socially.
And no, I’m not talking crap. There are a LOT of studies that prove what I said.
Higher penalties don’t change crime rates.
I believe that they do. I believe that after 10, 20, 50, 100, 1,000 people went to jail for 30 years for gun possession that the others on the outside would quickly learn that the consequences are not as severe when you commit crime with a bat or a knife or club or all kinds of other weapons.
Violence would still occur. But I do believe with harsher gun laws that less innocent civilians would have bullets going through their bedroom walls while they slept at night.
Jared Adams earlier this year shot and paralyzed Christopher Rodriguez in Oakland. Jared Adams had previously been convicted of an illegal gun charge. Had Jared Adams been in jail for 30 years for the illegal gun charge he would not have been out on the street and able to shoot Christopher Rodriguez. Christopher Rodriguez would still have his legs and would be able to do what 10 year olds love to do, run and play.
This is a very real case where a harsher sentence would have saved a senseless act of violence.
Personally I don’t care if Jared Adams or others using illegal guns rot in prison for 30 years. When you see the violence and destruction that these people cause. Little kids dead, moms dead, innocent people — people that possess illegal guns deserve to be in prison.
Get rid of your weapons and you get rid of the extremely high murder rate.
My own belief is that the vast majority of crimes with guns are committed with illegal guns, not legal guns. Start locking these people up and the murder rate will go down.
“And don’t say everybody who wants weapons gets them on the black market. It’s just not true People waht what they can get easily. As long as weapons are sold legally in stores like bread, you’ll have problems”
What bullshit…Dude, do you know how many illegal drugs came through the ports of San Francisco this last year? Even though they are illegal that doesn’t stop them from coming through. The very fact that they are illegal might increase the production. No, lame-o tighter restrictions on guns is only a band aid on a much bigger problem. You need to understand something…Simply put those who are willing to discharge their weapons in public don’t give a fuck if buying a gun is legal or illegal. Besides you go ahead and try changing the constitution so people can’t bear arms. This is just the wrong avenue to fight. I agree with Thomas stronger penalties for gun posession is the answer.
Guns are for killing people with. Nobody should be allowed to own a firearm without a very good reason and a license.
There’s no rational argument to the contrary. The right to bear arms exists purely for historical reasons. We live in a very different world to the one where the 2nd amendment was drawn up.
“The level of gun ownership world-wide is directly related to murder and suicide rates and specifically to the level of death by gunfire.”
– International Correlation between gun ownership and rates of homicide and suicide.’ Professor Martin Killias, May 1993. (link)
I agree with most of this post. But mandatory minimum sentences? (Yeah, those have really helped in the battle against illegal drugs…) You are guilty of the same knee-jerk reactions as our politicians and all they’ve solved is the profitability problems of the corporations that run our prison system.
Yes the 2nd amendment is a relic, but the current generation will have to die out (or at least become to senile to vote) before we can fix the problem.
Personally I think the right to bear military-grade encryption protects us from our gov’mint more than a Glock.
Let’s try to respond to commenters points with more intelligence than “well, I believe they DO!”.
Thomas is right that we need to go after illegal gun possession with much greater penalties. I would gladly trade the drug offenders for this much more violent criminal class. Hopefully the gov—t will dial down the war on drugs a bit and stop making it so damn profitable for the dealers… Benefit: they can jail the idiots that shoot innocents while sleeping and make illegal gun ownership less affordable as it’s currently a fraction of the drug dealer’s income.
Completely agree with anon #2 that gun ownership is not the battle of the future and the 2nd amendment is not relevant to the current challenges for US citizens.
The other side of this is maybe we want to be a little more like Iraq. From what I can tell we do not have anywhere near the firepower of the citizens of Iraq and I’m betting the NRA wants us to. That is working out really well and maybe we should look at it.
I realize that I’m late to the conversation, but I feel I have to comment anyway. Our problem is much deeper than guns. GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE. A gun is only a tool and like any other tool it can be misused or mishandled. While it is true that the USA has more privately owned (both illegal and legal) firearms than other countries you have to keep in mind that a very small percentage of those guns has a crime attached to them. I have several guns. I use guns for hunting, for sport shooting, and I also collect vintage firearms. I have never commented a crime with these gun and I legally own them.
The problem is much more complicated than just getting rid of guns or even stiffer penalties. Although I agree with the stiffer penalties I don’t believe that it is the sole solution. These are only putting a band aide on the problem, We need the TEACH PEOPLE THAT IT IS WRONG TO KILL PEOPLE.