It's not a beautiful day in the old neighborhood

Prince George's County, Maryland, where we lived until we were 25, has now had 13 homicides so far in 2011, a higher fatality rate than the 12 military casualties in Afghanistan this year to date.

To be fair, one of the county's fatalities has been ruled justified:

"A 30-year-old was shot and killed Tuesday by a homeowner while trying to break into the owner's New Carrollton residence."

Another successful firearm usage that the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center refuse to acknowledge happen on a daily basis in America, even in virulently anti-gun states such as this one.

We remind everyone that Maryland is a "may-issue" state with the State Police enjoying sole discretion over the issuance of handgun carry permits, which generally means (with rare exceptions such as documented death threats, and even then it's a complete crapshoot) that someone who applies for such a permit "may-not" have one.

This tightfisted policy of always saying "no" to permit applicants ensures that it's certainly not law-abiding citizens who are running around shooting each other but rather criminals, gangbangers and other thugs, all lawbreakers who by definition would have gone right ahead and obtained firearms by any available means despite the many, many laws in place to supposedly prevent them from doing so.  Remind us again just how those draconian laws keeping guns out of the hands of decent people are helping to reduce crime, Maryland pols?

The situation has gotten so bad there that panicked PG County officials have now requested "help" from federal agencies and other local departments and have begun highly-visible saturation patrols as a show of force, with the following infuriating (and sadly all-too-predictable) results:

"Some residents tell 9NEWS NOW that the increased police patrols following the murder spike in Prince George's County has led to some questionable activity. 

'The yanked me out of the car, put a knee on my back, and checked my rectum several times,' said a 20 year old man who did not want to use his name."

...

"State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said, 'In these cases, sometimes these things happen even if we don't want them to happen and it might be a matter of training.'"

Because, you know, cops need to be taught that it's not good police technique to (allegedly) perform multiple cavity searches on a suspect (whom the story doesn't report ever being charged with a crime) right on the side of the road.

Good luck stemming the current tidal wave of crime, Maryland and especially P.G. County.  We long ago left your high taxes, Nanny-state policies and freedom-choking gun laws behind to avoid this exact scenario.  We're truly sorry to observe that what we saw coming almost two decades ago has finally come to pass, and that a small minority of career troublemakers now has the rest of the sheep-like populace trembling with fear and begging the authorities, who have lost complete control of the situation, to make it stop. 

We wouldn't move back to that county for any reason on Earth.