San Francisco Will Pay Criminals Hundreds Of Dollars To Not Shoot People

Because liberalism is a mental illness, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that any solution to a problem brought up by a Leftist will be utterly moronic.
 
So when it comes to the problem of gun violence, instead of going with logical solutions like allowing people to defend themselves, the city of San Francisco will instead opt to pay “high risk criminals”, aka people who are highly likely to shoot someone, $300 a month to not shoot people and an extra $200 if they work on “improving their community”, which can mean anything from simply working and attending school to being a mediator in a situation that might lead to violence.
 
The kicker of that last one is that it’s unclear whether or not one needs to be successful in preventing violence through mediation in order to get paid. So it potentially could be that two people could be fighting, a person in the Dream Keeper Fellowship program (the program we’re talking about) comes in and says “stop, don’t hurt each other”, the two say “shut up” and the person in the program could just be like “well, I tried,” and be paid $200.
 
And there is a reason I think such a ridiculous situation could be plausible, which I will get to momentarily.
 
Now, where will San Francisco get the money to pay criminals not to specifically shoot people (another thing I will get to momentarily)? Well, by diverting $120 million in funding from law enforcement, of course. So it’s basically another “defund the police” attempt which will undoubtedly backfire on San Francisco.
 
According to The New American, the program “will start with engaging 10 participants in October, and will then expand to another 30 ‘high-risk individuals’ by the end of the year.”
 
And The San Francisco Examiner, which is critical of programs such as these, noted that this program is partly designed after the Operation Peacemaker Fellowship program in Richmond, California, which offers criminals up to $1,000 a month to not shoot other people.
 
At the outset, that program seems like a resounding success. A 2019 study published in the American Journal of Public Health showed that, following the installation of the program, there was a 55% decrease in gun homicides and a 43% decrease in shootings since the program began in 2010. However, there are a few problems with the program.
 
First, there is one massive, obvious loophole that criminals can take advantage of: They are paid not to SHOOT others, not to not harm or try to kill others in general. While it’s true that gun-related crime decreased by a lot since the program began, there was also a 16% increase in stabbings, beatings, all kinds of assaults and homicides which didn’t involve a firearm.
 
In essence, Richmond experienced what London has for a few years now: less gun-related crime, but a lot of other kinds of violent crime anyway.
 
They didn’t make their cities safer, just changed the way in which violence was perpetrated.
 
And the second problem of this program: it didn’t even work with one criminal. One of the participants of that Richmond program was later arrested and sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for SHOOTING and killing another man.
 
Basically, the guy was part of the program, likely was paid a decent amount of money (again, Richmond offered up to a thousand dollars a month), and then went on to violate the terms of the program anyway, rendering it utterly useless.
 
Those two real-life cases are the reason I think that aforementioned ridiculous scenario, where two people fight and a participant could be paid for “trying” to stop it, could happen, and why I specified that the program pays criminals to not shoot people.
 
The guy who shot and killed someone was paid by the program and then went on to violate the rules of the program anyway, so it’s easy to see someone doing that exact same thing in San Francisco and particularly easy to see someone “trying” to stop a violent act from happening and getting paid even if unsuccessful.
 
And the rise in other kinds of violent crime apart from gun violence is why I specified the program paying criminals not to shoot others. Such idiotic solutions may appear to work at the outset, like I said, but they don’t actually work to perform the stated purpose of reducing violence.
 
If San Francisco wants to see a decrease in violence, gun-related or otherwise, they need to make it easier for people to arm and defend themselves.
 
Like I have said in other articles talking about gun control, it doesn’t work. San Francisco has strict gun control measures and still sees a lot of gun violence. That’s no coincidence.
 
And for those who might argue that it makes no sense to make it easier for criminals to get a gun, consider that this makes it easier for law-abiding citizens to get a gun, and criminals often target people and places they strongly believe are unarmed.
 
Schools are gun-free zones and are often targeted by sickos. Police departments and prisons have tons of people who have guns and know how to use them, and you rarely, if ever, hear about shootings happening in those places.
 
Now, one might argue “but military bases have been sites for shootings, and they have the best weapons in the world.” Yes, but bases also have regulations that disarm their soldiers in most places. Allow soldiers to always be armed and you will be far less likely to hear of shootings at military bases, and if you do, the death toll will be minimal and will almost certainly largely include the shooter.
 
The general point is that by disarming the populace, you make it easier on the CRIMINALS to get their way. Not to mention that programs like these can, and often do, fund their criminal actions.
 
Criminals will procure their weapons most often through illegal means, so gun control law doesn’t prevent anyone from getting a gun except people who already INTEND to follow the law and would use it defensively.
 
Like I said, if San Francisco wants to really reduce violence in their city, they should allow their citizens to arm themselves more easily. But Democrats never actually care to solve the problems they create. After all, how else are they going to get their fundraising and donation money to “try to solve these problems”?
 
They will dine and live great lives off of the blood of their constituents.
 
Matthew 15:14
“Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”