Today, we went to Jim Harris’ office at Broadway and 10th street. He’s a criminal defense attorney so he knew quite a bit about our topic. He was able to tell us a lot about how sentences work for crimes involving guns. He had a whole rubric showing how different crimes correlated with punishments. This rubric showed all the different kinds of felonies from type one to type five, and how everything worked. It was great to see this because it was just cold hard facts which can be really helpful when trying to understand something. He also talked about Australia. Australia had terrible gun laws for a very long time, and this led to a lot of gun control issues and crime. Because of a terrible gun violence massacre in 1996 they recently changed their gun laws and as a result saw a massive decrease in crimes involving guns. If America could just do this, there would be fewer crimes committed. He told us to maybe see a prosecutor so we could see the opposite perspective of this issue. We’re trying to get in touch with someone from the District Attorney’s office to talk to a prosecutor. They would definitely have a different view on our topic and it would be great to have two different perspectives. This was a great step for us because it was our first fieldwork. I can’t wait to learn more!
