Portland has exploded in terms of gun violence. It is one of the things that has may me want to breathe fire. I will be as neutral as I can be because honestly I do not think either side is the all evil. I will say however to anyone wondering that we have had Mayors we ran themselves as Democrats for 29 years. Bud Clark was an independent and his term ended December 1992 and the last Republican mayor was Connie McCready who was a female journalist who was mayor only after someone else died, and was the mayor during the St. Helens eruption. No shade there I just found that an interesting tidbit, and it may save you during a trivia night.

Point of the whole matter, what if you in front of your screen were brought with news that your home city had gun crime that had gone up close to 300% between two years. Some may ask, what are the details, and I will further explain. What if from January 2019 to December 2020 shootings gone up three times over, and on top of that reports are just coming out that this year in a single month we have had almost a hundred shooting incident in a month.

Those are from the City of Portland’s own tally. What if from 2019, to 2020 we went from almost 400 incidents to almost 900?

Knowing we are almost at hundred in a month we can break a thousand this year, and that makes me want to take the circus dive challenge in to a barrel of alcohol strong enough I would forget my own name. This is disgraceful.

Some may then bring up that the majority is driven by the police shootings.

There are some and even some errors made by some officers but they are in the clear minority versus everything else.

We are looking at a huge increase in gun violence and here is the problem. The number one move to get away from such things is move out, great for some, but what if you cannot, what if you are stuck. Portland has few positives right now but cheap and safe ways to move out of the city is not one of them. People are going to be more apt to fight, they will brawl and more people will be shot and it will be at the feet of the city commissioners and the mayor. Not about their politics, but about execution they have failed to such a degree that all of them should refund their wages back to the city and remove themselves in shame for the failure that their tenure has been. All of them, fail after fail after fail and now there is more blood in the streets then ever.

It is not just about shelter, it is about safety, and being somewhere where some can learn good habits and now, we as a state decided that having small amounts of hard drugs is only a fine. No one can tell me how this will actually help, so if anyone will volunteer such secrets I would be appreciative. Some say they have faith they know what the politicians in this city are doing. I trust them as far as they can throw me and since I am a card carrying member of the super heavyweight division, and I actually know a little about defending being thrown that ain’t an inch.

We as a city need to do better. Our homeless, our citizens, our people deserve better. While I tried to inject some humor in places how can anyone feel safe when you know it takes twelve minutes on average for police to help you in high risk crimes like shootings when you know when every second counts.

The world will get better but it will take time.

Stay strong and stay safe.