Self-defense is rising in Philadelphia, Pa., and some in the media appear to be unsure of whether this is a good thing. In a recent article from The Philadelphia Inquirer, the paper observes a sharp uptick in defensive use of firearms within the city. Citing several recent stories similar to the NRA’s popular The Armed Citizen column, the paper says documented defensive gun use almost doubled in the “City of Brotherly Love” last year, rising from 12 documented uses to 20.
The increase comes as the number of handguns legally purchased in the city have doubled in the last two years, while carry permits have increased a staggering 6,300% in one year (from 1,100 applications in 2020 to 70,000 in 2021), with women comprising half of new applicants.
While noting the actions of armed citizens effectively defending themselves with lawfully-possessed firearms, the Inquirer also cites studies about potential harms of gun ownership—some as old as the 30-year crime records Philly is now surpassing—and interviews gun-control advocates who still fret that guns are “too prevalent” and risk recreating the “Wild, Wild West.”
Some point to a recent incident in the city that left three individuals dead and several others wounded as an example of violence involving firearms. But as the Inquirer admits, the shooting was started by a man with an arrest record that, had a “clerical error” not resulted in a delayed prosecution, would likely have been prohibited from lawfully carrying the firearm he used to initiate the shooting. That man’s assault was ended by a lawfully-armed citizen.
Philadelphia has already been experiencing a wave of illegal shootings, with some 562 criminal homicides documented in 2021, and the numbers are keeping pace this year. The numbers reflect national trends in a number of major cities.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) expects there to be more shootings, legal and illegal. “The total number of shootings and the climate of gun violence has gotten more severe,” Krasner told the press. “I would expect that there would be more situations involving self-defense.”
Krasner was elected in 2017 with the backing of far-left financier George Soros, and quickly fired 31 prosecutors, eliminated cash bail for lower-level offenses, reduced prosecutions for those with illegal guns, reduced criminal sentences and let many prisoners go free. There were 353 murders in Philadelphia the year he took office. Three years later, in 2021, Philadelphia saw more homicides in a year—562—than the city has ever seen.
Meanwhile, 911 response times are getting longer, and a “perfect storm” of police staffing shortages, retirements and low morale in the city continue.
“We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” Krasner told reporters last year. This year, he admits, “We are dealing with the worst spike in gun violence over the last two now almost two-and-a-half years that we have seen in a very, very long time,” but added that at least the numbers “aren’t twice as high.”
If the story sounds familiar, it’s because we covered a similar rise in crime in California, where even Hollywood elites are buying guns for protection. With even San Francisco having just recalled Soros-backed, soft-on-crime District Attorney Chesa Boudin (D), perhaps impeachment proceedings that have been instigated against Krasner will be successful.
From coast to coast, it’s clear Americans of all political persuasions reject soft-on-crime proposals that stonewall lawfully armed citizens while setting violent offenders free.
