IRON PIPELINE

THE HIGH-CAPACITY HANDGUNS FUELING BALTIMORE’S EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE INCREASINGLY ENTER THE CITY THROUGH AN UNDERGROUND NETWORK OF OUT-OF-STATE TRAFFICKERS. CAN ANYTHING BE DONE TO TURN OFF THE SPIGOT?

- RON CASSIE

THE FIRST TIME SOMEONE SHOT AT HIM, Kevin Shird was a tall, skinny 16-year-old. He’d been playing basketball when another kid he barely knew walked up and accused Shird of disrespecting his girlfriend. When the teenager reached for the gun in his front waistband, “dip” in Baltimore parlance, Shird chucked the basketball under his arm at him and ran. The next time someone pulled a gun on Shird, he was 17, and the target of a street robbery. When he was 21, a guy took a shot at him in broad daylight on West Fayette Street over a neighborhood beef. This time, he shot back. Shird grew up in Edmondson Village. Not the easiest place to be a teenager. His father was a corrections officer and his mother worked at a department store, but raising four kids and paying for food, rent, and gas and electric bills was a lot to manage. The eviction was an ever-present threat. Sometimes the water got shut off. Getting three solid meals a day was a struggle at times, but getting a gun for protection wasn’t difficult at all. He’d known drug dealers since he was little, and he eventually went to work on a corner. His first gun was a .22 caliber Colt revolver, bought cheap from a heroin addict. Pretty quickly, he traded up to a .357 Magnum.