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.
Several weeks ago when I started writing about the crime issue in Philadelphia, I received an email from a Bryan Miller. Subsequently, I met with him a few times. Bryan is a former international businessman who has put his attache case aside and is now trying to reform our gun laws. His brother, a former FBI agent, was killed in the line of duty and Bryan has made gun sanity his mission, both in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Jill Porter writes about him in her column in today's Daily News.
What I like about Bryan is that he isn't willing to accept compromises that he knows won't work. And he knows that this is a long-term struggle.
He is a man fighting the good fight
Here is Jill's column:
Jill Porter | This man has the answer to our gun woes
BRYAN MILLER was cooking Thanksgiving dinner at home 12 years ago when he got the phone call that would irrevocably alter the course of his life.
It was his sister. She had news of his younger brother, Mike.
Mike, whose companionship was a childhood comfort when the family moved from place to place to place. Mike, with whom he shared a love of books and loyalty to University of Maryland sports teams. Mike, 41, an FBI Special Agent whom he'd spoken to the weekend before.
Mike had been murdered by a homicide suspect in a shooting inside a Washington, D.C., police station. He died along with a police official and another FBI agent.
"It's such a strange and bizarre thing to lose somebody because they were shot," said Miller, 55, of Haddonfield, N.J.
"I still feel sadness, but the shock is the thing that never goes away."
Mike's murder had so changed Miller's priorities that he found he couldn't return to his life as an international businessman.
He eventually gave it up to become executive director of Ceasefire NJ, which is devoted to "gun violence prevention."
"It was a survival mechanism - it was how you get up in the morning. It still is."
After helping change the gun culture in New Jersey, Miller has brought his agenda to Pennsylvania - which supplies much of the hardware used in gun crimes across the bridge.
He said 40 percent of the guns used in Camden crimes came from Pennsylvania. That is nearly double the percentage since 2000.
Miller wants to stop Pennsylvania's notorious practice of allowing straw purchasers to buy unlimited guns that wind up in the hands of criminals.
He's not cowed by the behemoth gun lobby because "even the NRA can't make gun crime patriotic."
He believes - really, he does - that Harrisburg can and will pass a statewide one-gun-a-month bill, which is his legislative priority.
And the crazy thing about Bryan Miller is - when you're finished talking to him, you believe it, too.
Miller knows people think he's delusional. The conventional wisdom is that Harrisburg won't even let Philadelphia limit gun sales, much less restrict purchases statewide.
Skeptics thought the same thing when his organization sought a bill to make guns childproof in New Jersey, he said.
"When we started in late '96, nobody had ever heard of the concept," he said.
"We got the same attitude: 'What's this?' 'It will never work.' 'It's not proven and we can't pass it.' At the time the NRA was the most powerful lobby in New Jersey.
"Now we've got a childproof law and the NRA is absent," he said.
Miller is convincing because, while others clamor for immediate solutions, he talks of a long-term strategy.
While politicians seek to quell the crisis with committees and summits and feel-good proposals to innoculate themselves from public backlash, he maps out a methodical strategy for the next 10 years:
To develop what he says is underlying support for handgun restrictions through education and outreach.
To create an alliance of organizations here and in other crime-plagued cities across Pennsylvania.
Most importantly, to identify and target for defeat state legislators whose pro-gun postures differ from their constituents.
Miller dismisses the proposed one-gun-per-month law that applies only to Philly as a palliative offered by spineless legislators to placate voters. That belief was confirmed by this week's closing of a notorious Upper Darby gun shop.
"We know there are many more stores in suburban counties than in Philadelphia," Miller said.
And who can disagree, when it would only be a matter of a quick trip across the county line for a straw purchaser to stock up on guns and come right back?
Still, a statewide law seemed too much to hope for - until I talked to Bryan Miller.
Now, I'm a believer in the man who's mission began with a tragic phone call 12 years ago. E-mail porterj@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5850. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/porter
Also worth reading is the article that The Inquirer featured in its Sunday edition called Snared by the Streets written by Robert Moran. Go to: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/ It profiles several youths who are now serving time in prison. It gives you a good understanding why there is no one solution to the increasing violence in our urban streets.
Finally, there is my column in today's Daily News where I explain why adding more cops to the police force yields far fewer cops on the street than people imagine.
So there you have it--three articles--one focusing on the perpetrators, another on a citizen taking on the gun lobby and the third showing how more can be less.
