The Philly DA announced today that they would not be pursuing charges against Marvin Harrison for the shooting incident in which his gun was involved.  I am not trying to stick it to Harrison in any way shape or form.  I could care less about the Colts because they are sitting at home and are of no relevance whatsoever to the goals of this franchise for the next month.  With that being said, this is what we know about the shooting that took place on April 28:

6 Shots were fired from Marvin Harrison's custom Belgian handgun outside of Marvin Harrison's bar.

One bullet struck a man in the hand.  A two year old was cut on the face by flying glass when another bullet shattered the windshield of the car.  Four other bullets were randomly sprayed into a residential neighborhood.

The man who was struck on the hand had only minutes earlier engaged in an argument/altercation with Harrison inside said bar.

The gun was discovered by police in a bucket in a car wash that is owned by Marvin Harrison.  Harrison was present at the car wash when the gun was discovered, because they were interviewing Harrison at the time.

NOW

What the DA announced today was that they would not press charges against Harrison because they did not have enough evidence to prove Harrison's involvement.  In other words, they are simply saying they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Harrison was involved, NOT that they have proven his innocence.  The DA noted in the press conference that the main reason they could not move forward is because they can't get a credible witness, and have received "nine or so various versions" of the story.  Basically, no one will give police a straight story as to what happened.

In PA there is a law that says you can be charged if your gun is used in a crime, even if you are not the shooter.  So if they know it was Harrison's gun, and they know it created a bullet hole in a guy's hand, how do they not know a crime was committed with his gun?  The only 3 ways someone gets shot without a crime occurring are 1)self inflicted wounds 2)self-defense 3)complete and utter accidents with no negligence involved.  How any of those 3 could have happened in this case are beyond my imagination.  I truly do not understand how he got around this part.  Guns are used to kill things, pure and simple, and in this country, often guns kill people.  Anyone who owns a gun should accept the awesome responsibility that having a gun represents and keep it properly secured.  Even if you assume Marvin absolutely has no idea about anything, the fact still remains that someone used Marvin's gun to shoot someone outside his bar and stowed the gun in Marvin's business all without him knowing about it.  If this is the case he clearly does not have the maturity and is not responsible enough to handle having a gun.  This, to me, represents criminally negligent behavior.

If anyone wants to explain to me any plausible scenario under which a guy is shot with Harrison's gun after arguing with Harrison and the gun is found stashed in a bucket in a car wash owned by Harrison where Marvin was completely innocent and had nothing to do with it, I'm ready to listen.  If you want to make issue with any of the facts I presented, please do, as they all come from AP sources I found on google.  If you want to say "blah blah he hasn't even been charged, the police are never wrong" you might as well just not comment.  As I have already said, not charging someone only means that the DA does not believe she can win a prosecution with the evidence currently at hand.  It does not mean Marvin Harrison is innocent.  It doesn't even mean that pending new evidence, he might not be charged in the future.

The bottom line is this, if regular folks like us were in the same position, our personal firearm used to fire six shots in broad daylight, one of which wounded a man who we had just had an altercation with and the gun was found hidden in a business we own, we would have a lot of questions to answer.  From behind bars.  At the very least, we know the person who fired the shots must be close enough to Harrison to have access to his beautiful Euro-pistol, and have access to the car wash and have been at Harrison's bar.  If you can look at all this admittedly circumstantial evidence and know that there are no good eye-witnesses because they are all giving conflicting stories (read:lying), how can you honestly not be suspicious of Harrison?  You don't think there are a lot of people in Philly who would never ever never snitch on Marvin Harrison?

I can't explain all of these things.  I cannot construct a scenario based on these facts that leaves Marvin totally removed from any knowledge of the events or culpability whatsoever.  Feel free to try.