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At least 77 shot in Berks in 2022

Written by Steve Reinbrecht, Citizen Journalist

Feb 03, 2023

I counted 77 shootings – 21 of them fatal – in Berks in 2022. My tally is based solely on local media reports, so I may have missed some. In many news reports, very few details of these crimes are uncovered.

In 2021, I counted 64 shootings – 16 of them fatal. In 2020, I counted 63, with 10 of them fatal.

I don’t keep track of shootings to bolster the idea that Berks is a dangerous place. Berks and Reading and the whole United States are in general very safe. I never feel unsafe, unarmed as I am, in Berks, including Reading, where I have worked, lived and had fun since 1995.

I keep track of the shootings to support my idea that we need better gun control, although that horse might be out of the barn. In 2021, state police reported 40,814 gun sales in Berks, a county of about 430,000 people. [Statistics for 2022 were not yet available.] In 2021, state police reported, 13,803 people received licenses to carry firearms in Berks.

Crimefighters, though, point out that lawful gun owners mostly don’t commit gun crimes.

“The vast majority of crimes with firearms are committed by people without the legal right to own firearms,” District Attorney John Adams told me.

“Most of the firearms that we see in crimes are stolen,” Reading Police Chief Richard Tornielli told WFMZ in January 2023.

My count shows that the justification many people offer for having such dangerous devices – to protect themselves and their families – is weak. Of these 77 shootings last year, Adams determined that four were justified. In three, police shot an assailant. In the other, a father shot and killed his son in self-defense. On Christmas Eve, a person shot a 32-year-old man during a robbery attempt in a home in Reading. Adams said that case is still being investigated.

Due to scant reporting, it’s often hard to find motives for this aggravated violence. According to my tally, most shootings were the result of anger and a handy weapon. At least seven shootings were the result of domestic violence. Eight followed disputes; two were during a robbery. Three were accidental, including the shooting of the youngest reported victim — an 11-year-old girl wounded in a woman’s bathroom in Exeter when a bullet fired in an adjacent men’s room went through the wall. Shootings followed road rage. At least one was a murder-suicide. People were shot during gun fights, with police reporting finding many bullet casings at at least six crime scenes.
Local media reported ages for 51 victims, with an average of 30.5 years old. Of those, the oldest victim was 67. The youngest was 11. Seven were teenagers.

Eighteen of the shootings – about 30 percent – were outside Reading. People were shot in Wernersville, Maidencreek, Wyomissing, New Morgan, Muhlenberg, Brecknock, Union, Spring, Exeter, Maxatawny and Mt. Penn, beside 59 in the city. Victims were shot in the abdomen, leg, arm, shoulder, chest, head, back, foot, face, mouth, hip and stomach, according to reports.

My number of shootings in Berks doesn’t include any of the suicides by gun, although local media reported at least two suicides and one attempt using guns. Probably many more people used a gun to kill themselves in Berks last year. The coroner’s website has no statistics posted yet for 2022, but in 2021, the coroner listed 75 suicides. In 2020, across the U.S., guns were used in 53 percent of suicides, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center.

Beside the pain, disability, trauma and grief that shootings cause, they have a steep economic cost.

“Most shooting victims survive, but many face a long ordeal of pain and medical care that collectively costs patients, hospitals, and governments billions of dollars each year,” according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Adams said county crimefighters are strictly enforcing firearm violations in Berks. Witnesses often will not testify about who shot whom, but forensic evidence such as DNA and fingerprints can link firearms to suspects and lead to long prison sentences just for illegal possession without having to build a case for the violence.

He would like to devote more resources to investigating so-called “straw purchases,” in which somebody buys a gun for a person ineligible to own one. Earlier this month, a Philadelphia man was sentenced to at least six years in prison after admitting to his role, including selling firearms to ineligible persons, in a multi-county gun trafficking network that operated in Montgomery, Berks, Bucks, Lancaster and Philadelphia counties.

Adams supports more education for children about the dangers of firearms, and said some “common-sense” red-flag laws might help, especially in cases of mental-health or domestic crises, and he points out that the rise in shootings is a nationwide problem.

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