Whatever happened to the media coverage of the mass shooting of police officers in Charlotte, NC in April? Only moments after the attack which took the lives of four law enforcement officers and injured four others, mainstream news feeds and social media sites were flooded with calls from journalists as well as Democrat politicians demanding that “something be done” about assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Joe Biden quickly issued a White House statement calling for swift gun control measures and (ironically) more funding for police.
Then, suddenly, everything went quiet. Why?
We all know why; because this has happened so many times in the past and the outcome is now laughably predictable. The eventual reveal of the alleged assailant’s identity derailed progressive gun control efforts. His race and background did not fit the narrative mold that Democrats are looking for (the unhinged white male gun nut, preferably conservative).
Terry Clark Hughes Jr. already had a long rap sheet in North Carolina well before he killed four police officers in April in Charlotte. With multiple warrants spanning several years as well as being involved in a high speed chase in January of 2024, Hughes should have been buried in the prison system for a very long time. Sadly, this was not the case – North Carolina is a blue state and Charlotte is a Democrat run city notorious for its soft treatment of repeat criminals.
Vi Lyles, the Mayor of Charlotte since 2017, is the city’s first black female mayor and a Democrat. The city council is predominantly progressive and has been pursuing “defund the police” measures since 2020. And this is the kind of political environment that you will consistently find in nearly every city in the US with high crime rates and mass shootings. It’s not a theory, it’s a rule.
Since at least 2017 Charlotte has been suffering from what many residents call a “revolving door” when it comes to prosecutions and prisons. Critics have accused the city leadership of engaging in “high profile arrests and low profile releases” in order to keep crime stats down. This includes a myriad of sex offenders and violent criminals set free in the past few years, only to have them victimize even more people not long after.
For example, in April Shareef Sudan Thompson, 36, was released from jail on bond despite facing charges in a violent stabbing last week in Uptown Charlotte. Local journalists discovered he has an extensive criminal history and police continue to question why extremely dangerous offenders are treated with such accommodations. City officials offer no clear answers, except to suggest that the bond system is to blame.
After the election of Vi Lyles, Charlotte soon rose through the ranks of most violent cities in the nation. It recently jumped to a list of the top 15 cities in the US with the fastest growing homicide rates.
Leftists and gun control advocates blame guns every time there’s a high profile shooting, yet they conveniently ignore the history of the shooters and who is in charge of the cities and criminal policies the shootings take place in. The Democrat policy of catch and release when it comes to the worst possible criminals is the biggest contributor by far to violent assaults and murders across the country.
Roughly half of all crimes in the US are perpetrated by a small percentage of offenders with pervasive criminal histories. Locking these people up for extended sentences should be the primary solution to the problem, but progressives absolutely refuse. Most likely, these releases are designed to obscure a growing crime epidemic in blue cities across the country. Meaning, if we want shootings like the one in Charlotte, NC to stop, Democrat officials must be removed from power first.
