OpEd: ‘Sweet Swag’ A Gross Reward for Mocking Philly Gun Violence Deaths

May 28, 2021

Op-ed by Senator Sharif Street

Every day in America over three hundred people are shot.  On Tuesday night 18-year-old Nasir Marks was fatally shot multiple times in West Philadelphia at around 7:30 p.m. A half-hour later, just before 8 p.m., a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed in my district in North Philadelphia. On Wednesday morning a mass shooting left a total of 10 people dead in California. Gun violence dominates the news cycle and threatens to numb us to routine reporting of loss of life comparable only to the pandemic in its infancy.