A Washington, D.C., teenager who was convicted of armed carjacking, assault and destruction of property as a juvenile subsequently went live on Instagram wearing a ski mask and holding a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle. The teen reportedly blew off the conditions of his probation, and, given all the talk from the Trump administration about the city’s rising crime rates and youth crime in particular, you might think a harsh reaction from his administration followed.
Given all the talk from the Trump administration about youth crime, you might think a harsh reaction from his administration followed.
But you would be wrong — the teen was spared punishment by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro last month. Yes, the same Pirro who, like many of her colleagues, justified President Donald Trump’s takeover of D.C. by decrying the prevalence of juvenile crime there.
The now-19-year-old in question had most recently pleaded guilty to illegally carrying a rifle outside his home or business, The Washington Post reported Monday, and a judge had determined that he had not reported to probation, submitted himself for drug tests or tried to get an education. But Pirro’s office has refused to enforce a D.C. law that makes it illegal for people without permits to carry long guns outside their homes and businesses. Thus, a teen with more warning signs than a nuclear reactor was allowed to walk out of court smiling.
Pirro’s position is emblematic of the Republican Party’s refusal to connect crime to guns and, indeed, its belief that places where guns are prohibited are less safe and not more so. That position, then, is a rejection of the view taken by many Democrats that the prevalence of crime is a function of the prevalence of guns. While it might not be a directly proportional relationship, it seems contrary to the evidence that there’s no relationship at all.
Those two positions clashed again last week after a 23-year-old with a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol fired into Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, killing an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old and wounding 15 children and three octogenarians. MSNBC host Jen Psaki rightly blasted conservatives for offering thoughts and prayers and only thoughts and prayers. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said: “At the end of the day, the problem is not guns. OK, Jen Psaki? The problem is the human heart. It’s mental health.”
Conservatives never get around to telling us why the human heart in the United States is especially depraved or why Americans’ minds are more prone to break in such a way that they are likelier to kill bunches of people. According to a 2022 academic paper, “Mass shootings in the US account for 73% of all incidents and 62% of all fatalities in developed countries.”
So unless the people who otherwise praise American exceptionalism want to argue that the American people’s hearts and minds are exceptionally bad, we should lean toward the theory that the United States’ being overrun with guns is, to some extent, a driver of gun violence. And that a meaningful reduction of guns should be a component in any strategy to reduce gun violence.
As Pirro was promising to throw the book at juvenile offenders last month, she dismissed a reporter’s question about root causes. “I honestly am not concerned about why they commit crimes,” she said. “My concern is if they commit crimes.”
Given her office’s new policy, however, Pirro appears to be equally unconcerned with how and with what people — including juveniles — might commit those crimes.
“Criminal culpability is not determined by the instruments people employ but by the intent and conduct of the actor,” Pirro said in an Aug. 20 statement. “Crimes are intentional acts and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent by my office regardless of what instruments of criminality are used. My job is to keep this city, its citizens, its businesses, and its visitors safe from harm and I will do that to the fullest extent of the law.”
By no stretch am I a tough-on-crime, lock-’em-all-up kind of person, but it is clear that Pirro’s office is not prosecuting gun cases to the “fullest extent.”
It is clear that Pirro’s office is not prosecuting gun cases to the “fullest extent.”
The Post, citing a transcript of the Aug. 21 proceeding, reports that prosecutor Rachel Bruce told Judge Andrea Hertzfeld that “the charge that the defendant was sentenced [for] in this case was carrying a rifle without a license” and that “the government is no longer prosecuting or pursuing those types of charges.” And in a move that stunned even the teen’s defense attorney, the prosecutor asked that the judge “terminate probation.”
“I see that big smile on your face,” the judge told the teen before saying she was releasing him from probation per the government’s request. The prosecutor also suggested that the teen’s attorney should file whatever he needs to file to have his client’s sentence vacated.
“I have never seen that before, especially for a firearm case,” defense attorney Brandon M. Burrell told the newspaper. “The government is typically quite aggressive in gun cases in D.C.” He said that he had heard about Pirro’s position on rifles but that “I didn’t expect to see it take effect in court so quickly.” Indeed, the teen’s case was dismissed the day after Pirro’s statement made the news.
As often as it has been said, it still bears repeating that crime in D.C., while a valid concern, had noticeably dropped before the president called in the National Guard to patrol its streets and that Trump’s decision to usurp power there was a political signal and not driven by any discernable regard for the residents’ safety or their wishes.
Most important, Pirro’s new rule — which had the effect of sending a violent young man back out on the streets unsupervised — is exactly the kind of policy we might expect to drive the crime rate back up.
