Pa. ranked 2nd in black homicide

A recent report released last week ranked Pennsylvania the second-highest state in black homicide victimization.

This data — in addition to the fatal shooting near the high rises last semester and the recent shooting of an Arizona congresswoman — has prompted CeaseFirePA to team up with the Undergraduate Assembly in the fight against gun violence.

According to data from the Violence Policy Center, Pennsylvania was second only to Missouri on the list.

The rankings are compiled based on the latest Federal Bureau of Investigation data, which comes from 2008.

However, Josh Sugarmann, the Executive Director of the Violence Policy Center in D.C., confirmed that “Pennsylvania has been at the top in the majority” of recent years past, ranked first in 2007, 2006 and 2004.

According to the data, handguns were the weapon of choice in the majority of Pennsylvania homicides. Sugarmann linked the high rate to Pennsylvania’s comparatively lenient gun laws, among other factors. Because Pennsylvania has “preempted the field of firearms regulation,” Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, for instance, are barred from putting in place their own stricter laws.

The cause of Pennsylvania’s exorbitant rank cannot be blamed solely on “lax gun laws,” Phil Goldsmith, president of the Board of the nonprofit CeaseFirePA, said.

Combating these numbers will require a grassroots effort, Goldsmith said. In that spirit, CeaseFirePA took initial steps recently to talk to the UA about getting Penn students involved.

Jake Shuster, a College sophomore and UA committee director of civic and Philadelphia engagement, realized that “in the wake of recent events on campus and [in] Tucson, there was increasing interest in gun protection” among the student body.

The UA is working on a broad resolution expressing Penn students’ concerns about gun violence. Shuster expects that the UA will consider passing it in the next two to three weeks. He hopes that the resolution will then be circulated around a number of Pennsylvania schools.

Shuster stressed that Penn students would be working with CeaseFirePA to uphold and enforce the current legislation and to “show Harrisburg that we need resources allocated to making sure guns don’t get into the wrong people’s hands.”

According to the Violence Policy Center’s data, Pennsylvania had 449 black homicide victims in 2008, a rate of 31.05 for every hundred thousand black citizens. Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs were responsible for 263 of the total homicides, making it the leading sector in homicide rates for the state.

In comparison, the national rate across all races is 4.93 per hundred thousand and the national rate among the black population is 18.07 per hundred thousand.

Sugarmann stressed that addressing civilian gun possession is the first step toward lowering the homicide rate. These guns become available to Pennsylvania’s urban population via illegal resale.

In high-crime and high-poverty areas like West Philadelphia, where unemployment and high school drop out rates are relatively high, “young folks don’t have much hope.”

“Gun violence is a part of their culture,” Goldsmith said.

This reality is “terrible,” but the starring role of guns in popular culture and the availability of firearms only adds to the problem, he added.

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