​ The City Of?...

After reading and seeing many statistics for gun control in Philadelphia in my opening Blog Post, I began opening my eyes a little more and grasping all the information I could get. I started to think more about how much gun violence is going on in Philadelphia and did a little bit more research  .  Did you know that Philadelphia is the most violent of the ten largest cities in America? Also, that a Philadelphian is four times most likely to get shot than anywhere else? With that being said, I had further questions on which areas of Philadelphia where people think they are safe as where to others some of them may be dangerous. In my quest to gather more information, I chose to do a survey (see below)..  

I asked three questions based on the part of Philadelphia the participants lived in. After asking where the lived, I wanted to know the following: if the participants thought they were safe in their respective neighborhood, and did they know anyone that was injured by gun violence within the past two years? Some of the stories I read was horrific and terrifying. I wasn’t sure if anyone wanted their story to be read so I made it unknown because this is a very soft topic for people to talk about and I respect that. But, I decided to make a graph based on the responses I received.  

The responses told me a story about our city. Out of the 37 participants that completed the survey, 43% reported that they felt safe in their neighborhood in light of the gun violence in the city.  But on the flip side of that, 52% admitted that their safety in their neighborhood depends, and 5% confirmed that they did not feel safe in their neighborhood. The majority of those surveyed feel that their safety in their neighborhood is always in jeopardy, I feel like that poor gun control is the reason for these Philadelphians to feel unsafe. On Saturday, April 27, 2015, a protest was held in South Philadelphia.   Several dozen protesters led by the Washington-based Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence singled out Firing Line Inc. for having sold, over the years, dozens of guns that later were used in crimes or in some other way ended up in the possession of law enforcement authorities. As I said in my first blog, better laws for gun control is where we should start to help people feel safe in their neighborhoods. Not feeling safe in our neighborhoods makes people not trust each other, and good relationships are not formed.  My dad often talks about how when he was growing up that all the people in his neighborhood knew each other, talked, and shared different items.  But in today’s climate, there is no trust because good relationships are not formed.  Children no longer play outside in front of their homes because there are  too many stories of children being shot in crossfire. Guns bring about fear.

In conclusion, I feel like we need to do better with knowing who has guns legally, and then find those that have them illegally.  Laws alone will not do this, but we will need help from regular people that care about this problem and the safety of the communities. With doing all the research and looking deeper into my topic, I want to make this known to everyone in Philadelphia that there needs to be a change. I want everyone to get the word out about it and maybe it will go viral so that Philadelphia will have their voice heard. I look forward on continuing my project and in making Philadelphia a place you want to be, and where you can be safe.

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