Phil Goldsmith has held senior positions in a broad spectrum of fields including law, journalism, business and government. Most recently he was managing director of the City of Philadelphia.
He is now a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, writing every other Wednesday and is a principal in GoldsmithKahn Associates, a public issues management consulting firm.
I have received a lot of letters as a result of my most recent Daily News column on the spate of violence and homicides in Philadelphia, with guns being the weapon of choice. Here is a smattering:
" There is a completely pervasive culture of violence in our entire society. And the TV shows and movie industry don't help.......but it does come down to the parents, bottom line."
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"I must say that if those 50 murder victims in Philadelphia had been armed, they might not be dead. Every law abiding citizen should own a gun and know how to properly use one. I myself plan to move away from the Philly area (I work in King of Prussia but live in eastern Lancaster County) since I cant stand the very insular and unfriendly general population. That and the mounting violence bothers me. I am a professional (environmental chemist), but have hunted and fished all my life, and therefore have a great respect and understanding of guns and what they can do. Most people dont and I think criminals rely on this ignorance.......and the coddling they get from our legal system. If a criminal has to think to himself "Is this guy I'm gonna rob packing a gun?", thats a good thing. To be honest, I'm just waiting for someone to break into my place.........they will never get out in one piece!"
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"u guys keep beating on the 1 gun a month. that's not it. look at the Phila court system for tossed cases on VUFA's (Violation of Unifrom Firearms Act). Start there, then look at Montgomery county's conviction rate on VUFA's. Where people think that 1 gun per month is going to change anything, I have no idea where that notion is coming ftom. I am dead serious about the Phila Courts. I am a probation officer in Montco and have been dealing with this for 14 years. How can a person be arrested time and time again for VUFA and voila, the charges are quashed, dismissed, nol prossed, tossed, beaten by the defendant. again, start there. run stats on it and that'll give u your answer."
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"More than 38 years ago, a man who would have been my father in law, had he lived, told his deaf daughter, June that people should not have guns in their house because they are more likely to use a gun in domestic squabbles, suicide, accidental shooting of a spouse in the basement while thinking it was a burglar and to have a child accidentally find it to use as a toy only to kill another child or himself by accident than to kill a burglar in your house.
He always thought it was best to call the police to investigate a possible break in than to take matters in your own hands and make a mistake or get yourself killed.
His chilling remarks about guns had an impact on me. This was the musings of a very intelligent man who was deaf and a graduate of the Pennsylvania School of the Deaf in 1939. He was right on the marbles on that one. Had there been no gun, a distraught father would have given up the notions of blowing out his brains or using a gun in a moment of extreme anger during a domestic squabble. Or a child would still be living as a grown adult with children of their own.
Recently, a Russian immigrant businessman was charged with using a gun to kill one of three y youth who were hanging around his property and sitting on the seat of his open car in tony Doylestown Hunt where houses sell for $400,000 plus. The guys were running away from him and he shot one of them to death. The other two escaped. He used the defense of his property as a reason for using a gun. The DA brought the charges last week after studying for more than a week the implications of the law as applied to the incident.
Had the person thought of calling 911, police would have arrived within 3 to 5 minutes and collared the perpetrators outside his property.
So, he will have to defend himself against a jury of his peers in the near future at Doylestown Courthouse. He could go to jail for that."
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"What disturbs me more about guns in the wrong hands is the erroneous macho thoughts about owning a gun. It does not apply solely to the blacks living in desolate neighbors, but to the families living in nice homes in upstate Pennsylvania who go on hunting trips. Fathers think they are male bonding with their sons when they give them a hunting rifle and that is not the case as there are many other things Fathers can male bond with their sons on.
The idea that you are a man when you are entrusted with the handling of a gun is as fallacious as the idea that all 16 year olds are entitled to a car of their own. A person can be a man or a woman in various ways by demonstrating mature judgment in the conduct of their personal self, the handling of money and holding a job, the taking care of your household and its needs, the taking care of the children and the spouse, the helping of elderly parents and relatives, a solicitous behavior toward strangers by offering assistance if it was ever seen to be needed. All that and more is what determines how mature you are.
Yet in our cities (and small towns, too!) people are imbued with the notion that they are not respected as a man until they take steps to acquire personal firearms. A real man asserts himself by blowing away the other guy. And this leads to a circle of violence as revenge goes around.
People have to think and take responsibility. They have to realize that they are not safe if guns are easily sold or passed around multitudes of people who may not be well qualified to use them properly and legally.
Families have to teach children alternative responses to conflict as schools can only do so much.
The media has to cooperate. Movies must tone down their scripts which glorify ownership of an arsenal and the blowing away of people.
Most of all, people have to look at their own code of ethics and see if it should be reconciled with societal values. If they don't do it, they will only be doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again."
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"Some years ago, Fr. Anthony Russo, a priest who ministers to the deaf, told me he was called to the morgue to identify a deceased deaf man who had no family. He passed through gurneys with the day's deceased and the mortician told him that those people were transported there by police wagons after being found dead on the street. There were about 12 deceased young men in those gurneys and they were victims of gun violence the preceding 24 hours. There was scant mention of their deaths in the newspapers.
We deserve better. And we should have faith in our young that they will choose to walk on the right path."
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"If the "brothers and sisters" that run this toilet called Philadelphia could ... and would enact legislation to limit gun sales to one per month and it has no effect on crime (which it won't) what would be their next step? What would you suggest then? One a year?... All the laws on the books and any new ones will have no effect until judges are made to uphold and enforce our laws. The animal that executed Officer Gary Skerski should had been put in jail a long time ago. They won't even enforce the mandatory gun laws we have in the city."
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"This country has been on the downswing since the late 60s when we allowed university takeovers, rioting in the streets, etc. To me the country has never recovered and what that man wrote about in that letter has only become worse over the years and will continue to in succeeding generations. The family angle is where it all is."
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"According to column author Phil Goldsmith, “[w]e need someone who has the credibility to elevate our need for tighter gun regulations from solely a political issue to a moral issue.” But gun control already is a moral issue; it has been since the Founding Fathers so wisely enshrined the law-abiding citizen’s right to possess guns in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. What Mr. Goldsmith evidently fails to recognize is that morality cannot exist in the absence of freedom: One cannot make a moral choice without first receiving the opportunity to choose. To the extent Mr. Goldsmith and others like him advocate restrictions upon the right to possess firearms, they are arguing for an amoral solution to an issue — the abuse of a highly personal freedom -- that is fundamentally moral in nature."
