Whose in charge here?

State's inner cities see surge in killings

The 2005 total, which ended at 97 with a shooting late on New Year's Eve, marked the third straight year in which Newark homicides increased -- a sharp turn from the historic reductions of the late 1990s, when killings dipped below 60.

But Newark's rising murder rate is part of a larger, more troubling development in New Jersey: Killings are up all over. Irvington, Newark's much smaller neighbor to the west, reached a new high of 28 murders last year. Trenton, the state's capital, suffered through a record-breaking year, with 31. Rapidly gentrifying Jersey City had 39, the most since 1982. Elizabeth's 17 murders were the most since 1995. Plainfield hit a 30-year peak with 15 killings. In Paterson, the number of murders doubled to 20 after falling in half the previous year.

All this is happening in a state with very restrictive gun control laws. Background checks for long guns, fingerprinting and purchase cards (usually obtained via local police stations) required for hand guns and no concealed carry for the average citizen.

Crime experts and law enforcement officials aren't sure why this is happening. But they're noticing a confluence of several disturbing trends in New Jersey and other states: increasingly violent behavior among a relatively small number of career inner-city criminals; the growth of Los Angeles-style street gangs; the continued emergence of ex-convicts from prison; and a youth culture in which guns have become an acceptable way to deal with petty beefs.

This is Democratically controlled New Jersey and these are Democratically controlled cities they are talking about. The gun-control crowd can preach all they want but this is another example of how and why it doesn’t work they way they dream it will. Gang members don’t purchase their guns legally.

Enforce the laws. Stop plea bargaining away the charges that carry the longest terms just to move people through the system. Lock them up for periods long enough to make it a real deterrent and not just the cost of doing business. Stop making prisons into R & R clubs. Start using the death penalty instead of making it a life sentence in all but name.