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ST. LOUIS — Sen. Nick Schroer and I share something in common.

We both refer to St. Louis as “our city.�

Neither of us, of course, actually lives in the city. I live in Wildwood, a suburb in west St. Louis County. Schroer, a Republican, lives in Defiance, in St. Charles County. At least, I think he does. Regular readers will recall that during his last run for the House district he used to represent, he was sued because he didn’t really live in O’Fallon anymore. The judge in the case recognized there were conflicting facts in the case, but he gave Schroer a sweetheart ruling, suggesting as long as he “intended� to serve the residents of the 107th House District, it didn’t really matter where he was living.

But back to “our city.� I think it’s fine that people like Schroer and me — suburbanites — use that phrase. Many of us, like me, pay city taxes because we work there and spend much of our time there. Folks I know all around the St. Louis region refer to St. Louis as their home, because they take pride in the city.

This legislative session, Schroer has filed a bill that would take St. Louis back to Civil War times, when the state took over control of the police department. It kept that control for more than a century, before voters gave it back to St. Louisans in 2012. Schroer suggests, wrongly, that crime is soaring in the city, and that people who live where he lives refuse to head downtown.

“Stopped bringing your family to Cardinals games because of crime? Stopped bringing your babies to St. Louis Blues because the city is unsafe? … Let’s take back control of our city and maintain law and order,� Schroer tweeted this week in trying to drum up publicity for a news conference he planned for Friday.

His use of “law and order� is interesting. In Schroer’s city, or, well, his former city, O’Fallon, the police chief recently gave a neighboring police chief, who was allegedly “hammered drunk,� a ride home after he was pulled over for driving under the influence. Maybe that’s how law and order is conducted where Schroer lives, er, lived.

For the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that Schroer really cares about the city of St. Louis, as I do. Similarly, I will take my mayor, Jim Bowlin, at his word when he says he’s running for a seat in the Missouri Senate to represent West Countians, but among his priorities is removing the prosecutor in St. Louis, Kim Gardner.

They love our city, they say. So, let’s talk about our city.

Last year, the St. Louis Cardinals finished for attendance, trailing only the Los Angeles Dodgers. With the exception of the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, this is where the Cardinals have ranked in attendance for most years since Busch Stadium III was built, with attendance varying between 3 million and 3.5 million. Similarly, the St. Louis Blues are averaging just more than 18,000 people per game at the Enterprise Center this season, a figure on pace with their attendance in 2019 when they won the Stanley Cup.

The old trope about nobody going to Cardinals games because they are afraid of downtown has been tried before by people more interested in stirring up outrage than solving problems. Take 1993. That was a particularly violent year in St. Louis, with 267 homicides, including one of a St. Peters woman, shot in a parking garage in Laclede’s Landing after attending a Cardinals game.

“Is it safe downtown,� wrote an op-ed writer in the Post-Dispatch that summer. “Can we take our families to the ball game?�

The city’s police department that year was under state control. The city’s homicide rate was the highest it’s ever been, except for the 2020 pandemic anomaly, when homicide rates around the country spiked. For the record, “our city’s� homicide rate has been stable for the past two years. This is not to say that the city has crime under control. Far from it. We have too many car break-ins. Too many shootings, like the one at The Foundry parking lot last week in which somebody fired from a moving vehicle at three teens and police. The teens were armed too. Police said one teen had a stolen Glock 19; another had a Glock 29 modified to be fully automatic.

Automatic weapons. There’s a problem that could use a solution. Police, prosecutors, aldermen, mayors, U.S. attorneys, and residents of St. Louis all recognize that the proliferation of guns, including increasingly dangerous ones, is feeding the city’s violence problem.

If Schroer and Bowlin and their ilk really want to reduce crime in our city, they’ll help new police Chief Robert J. Tracy take guns off the street. The folks in our city would appreciate their assistance.