U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Philadelphia calls itself the “City of Brotherly Love,” but homicides hit a record last year, according to NPR, which said the city is “maintaining that pace so far this year.”
Perhaps this explains why, according to a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “The number of handguns purchased in the city more than doubled to nearly 50,000 in the two-year period ending in 2021.”
“Just 22,000 were bought during the years 2018 and 2019,” the newspaper reported. “Permits to carry guns on the streets have grown even faster, soaring to 52,000 last year, up from 7,500 in 2020, according to state police figures.
The Inquirer is also reporting—or perhaps lamenting—about the rise in justifiable homicides being reported in the city. The newspaper tracked figures back to 2017, when there were eight justifiable fatal shootings, while last year, there were 20. While that may not represent a significant number, it’s been enough to get the attention of the newspaper, and perhaps the criminal element.
With a body count on the rise, it should be no wonder why more citizens are arming themselves against violent crime. The Inquirer reported specifically on three recent self-defense shootings in which no charges were filed against the armed private citizens who fought back. In one case, a South Philadelphia man went outside one evening to smoke when a would-be robber riding a bicycle came up, brandished a gun and demanded money. The smoker pulled his legally-carried sidearm and shot the robber dead.
In a second case, when an armed, masked robber “burst into” a Dollar General store in North Philly demanding money, the assistant manager drew his own gun and shot the thug in the head. As it turned out, the suspect’s gun was fake and the assistant manager was subsequently fired for having a gun on the job.
The third incident involved the attempted robbery of a man playing video poker in a Max Food Market. The armed would-be robber got a nasty surprise when the poker player drew his gun and fatally shot the robber.
Long story short, the number of justifiable homicides in Philadelphia “jumped 67% from 2020 to 2021.” So far this year, the newspaper added, at least eight “armed assailants” have been killed by their intended victims.
In its annual report on firearms, the Pennsylvania State Police stated, “In 2021, there were a total of 384,522 licenses to carry firearms permits issued as reported by County Sheriffs’ offices and the City of Philadelphia, equating to a 23.5 percent increase from 2020. Background checks are conducted through the PICS to determine an individual’s eligibility to obtain a license to carry firearms.”
The same report notes last year saw a total of 1,045,890 firearms transactions in Pennsylvania, including 599,752 handguns.
Not surprisingly, an “anti-violence activist” identified as Jamal Johnson declared, “We’re becoming the Wild, Wild West, and soon everyone is going to have a gun, killing people ― justified or not.”
According to Philadelphia Police data, the number of homicides in the city has more than doubled since 2014, when there were 248 slayings. Last year, the city logged 562 killings.
As noted by the Philadelphia Tribune, “Killings in the City of Brotherly Love have not reached that level since 1990 when there were 500, according to the police department.”
The Inquirer report included an interesting quote from Deputy Police Commissioner Benjamin Naish, who noted it is “no secret” that more people are buying firearms “everywhere across the country.”
“We have seen an increase in the number of people that have been applying for and receiving a permit to carry,” Naish said. “I think that they are concerned about their safety, and they’re carrying it legally, which is the big difference.”
It’s not just a “big difference” in Philadelphia. Last month, in Charleston, W.Va., an armed female stopped a would-be mass-shooter with her legally-carried sidearm in an act that was hailed by local police officials. According to WRAL News, a man identified as Dennis Butler, 37, had been “speeding up and down a parking lot” in an apartment complex where people were attending a graduation party and birthday party. Some of the people asked Butler to slow down, so he left but returned with a semi-auto rifle and opened fire. His attack didn’t last long, however, as the armed woman shot him dead.
“She did the right thing,” said Charleston Police Lt. Tony Hazelett. “I don’t know if any other person would have done that.”
At the far end of the country, in Washington State, the number of concealed pistol licenses has shot back up to more than 644,000, according to a recent AmmoLand report. Roughly 20-23% of those CPLs are held by women.
Adding to this drama, Fox News is reporting that five “major U.S. cities are currently on pace to break their homicide totals from last year, continuing a violent trend that started in 2020.”
The cities are Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, the report detailed. Milwaukee is the worst, with 96 homicides as of June 17, compared to 77 posted at this time last year.
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About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Long story short, the number of justifiable homicides in Philadelphia “jumped 67% from 2020 to 2021
Some people believe that this is a bad thing.
police cant arrest the criminals, prosecutors wont charge them this is the only alternative
Please if you move east of Oregon, make sure it east of the Mississippi, as you are no benefit to us Western Constitutional Americans. If you want tyranny like that over something you fear, then how can you complain about the lefts tyranny on something they fear, our guns. We were warned about cowardly folks like you by our Founders. You are the kind of weak moral character that Thomas Paine mentioned when he was talking about guarding your enemy from oppression,since it will be used on all of us. Folks like you destroyed our Liberty and the Bill of… Read more »
just feed them the pills they have, problem solved
have a friend that was a research scientist at u pen (of all things viruses) that got cc this year because of crime increase, she feels safe at home (police live in many of adjacent houses) but you have to go out sometime. she is a part time florida resident so over the 19/20 winter she asked me about getting a gun ,I went through the safety and safe handling drills with her (the fact she worked with things that could be fatal made it easy to get her to follow rules) and did the see what fits test at… Read more »
How do I delete this profile? Not into censorship
There is likely to be a bit of a “culling” period once people begin to carry concealed more often. Soon the fools will begin to fear the common man because it will be common to carry.
They won’t fear the common man in “gun free” zones like Uvalde SD, El Cielo Mall, Parkland, VA Tech & Pulse, so those massacres won’t stop.
Nope. This was all about gun control and making schools LESS safe by banning funds for training & arming teachers & staff, the real solution. I read the doors were locked at Uvalde but some dipshit opened one. There’s no substitute for armed teachers & staff. Remember what Patton said:
“Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of mankind.”
Like the French Maginot line. The French spent uncounted billions building the world’s most expensive and sophisticated fixed fortifications… that turned out to be useless. WORSE than useless, since the money they wasted there, if it had been used to develop anti-tank weapons instead, could well have rendered Hitler’s “Lightning war” a failure.
Human have a long history of preferring to prepare for the LAST war… rather than for the NEXT one! Probably because hind sight is easy, whereas foresight is difficult. Many (esp. the ignorant in positions of authority), prefer easy failure over difficult success. 🙂
Yep. Big problem with the Maginot Line: Never finished. Partly since they thought the Nazis would never go around, partly complications of walling Belgium in or out, partly commie-union-socialists had the 3rd Republic on the verge of perpetual insolvency, destabilized to the point no govt lasted more than a few months. The Nazis went around it. They also ‘canceled’ one or two military strategists who wrote combined tank and air strategies contrary to the top brass, which the Nazis read and used. To be fair to the French, who are always blamed, the biggest reason the Nazis succeeded was British… Read more »
Plus, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Airplanes can FLY, and when you can fly, groundbound things are virtually useless. The “end run” was easier and quicker for the Wehrmacht, but they could have taken the Maginot line head on as well. While Stukas kept the cloches(strong points) busy, tanks could roll right over them since the line mostly lacked any high velocity cannon capable of taking on the German panzers. Out of 1118 strong points, the only anti-armor weapons there were some 72, 25mm Hotch-kiss anti-tank guns… which were mostly unable to penetrate the panzers, but proved to be useful… Read more »
Why on earth did this get downvoted? Some low-IQ little hit & run coward.
By the force of habit? 🙂
PROTACALL WASN’T FOLLOWED IN PARKLAND, OR IN UVALDE DOOR PROPED OPEN , GUNMAN GOT ACCESS IN THAT DOOR AND POLICE WAITED 77MINUTES TO ENTER TO TAKE OUT GUNMAN!
Another reason “protocol” is no substitute for armed teachers & staff.
They will once enough sheeple get killed in those zones that none will go there any more. What will happen when all of the “gun free zones” are deserted? The psychos won’t go there anymore, that’s for sure! They will either go back to being serial killers, one victim at a time… or take their chances with a crowd full of armed NOT-sheeple. It doesn’t take many in the crowd to get to that point either. Only just a few. Like the church that had the armed shooter a few years back? Who got like one victim before being put… Read more »
Keith Thomas Kinnunen, at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, TX, Dec, 2019. My memory got a couple of the details wrong. He killed two people, not one. One of which was the armed usher, who was not the one that put the perp down, but one of his victims. “Jack Wilson, a volunteer member of the church’s security team, said he fired a single headshot to take down the gunman…” -https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50952443 There’s one man who doesn’t need to learn to shoot better! It turns out that several in the crowd were armed. “Several other parishioners also… Read more »
That may work in the private sector, but the vast majority of parents have no affordable alternative to government schools, since Abbott & Phelan block school choice, and even preemptively blocked the voters of individual districts from turning them into school choice districts.
Looks like there’s still a Abbott-Phelan sock posse getting butt-hurt when his sacred cucks get gored.
Similar to the last murder we had here in Glasgow, MT. Look it up under “Glasgow Sniper”, even though he had only a Ruger 10/22… hardly a sniper’s weapon. But, that’s the media for you. Mislabel everything that can be mislabeled. All the better to keep the sheeple confused. The perp killed one woman, Missy Greenhagen, an EMT coming out of the ambulance barn. He was immediately taken under fire by another competitive shooter well known to me, Whom I will only call SB, since he does not want any notoriety, and that is the way it appears in all… Read more »
Oooh, lookie, downvotes. Some low-IQ hit & coward puppet-runner loves “gun free” zones.
It would appear that the lower in IQ someone is, the better they like the downvote button.
If you could exclude cities there would almost be NO homicides. lol
Must be true Arny. You’re about the 15th person who’s told me that in the past several days.
Thanks for reading and sharing this AMMOLAND report.
“So far this year, the newspaper added, at least eight “armed assailants” have been killed by their intended victims.”
Awwwwwwww………
people need to learn to shoot better ,numbers should be double that
I have said numerous times on other platforms, that I believe what the Leftist are afraid of, among other things is this… As more and more Americans carry weapons in self-defense, more and more justifiable homicides will eventually mean that more criminals will be shot dead by law abiding citizens than were ever shot by law enforcement officers. How ironic is that? The “defund the police” movement, was agrgravated by the senseless death of George Floyd (who was a habitual criminal himself). In the absence of police, and the liberties taken by anarchistic types who enjoy violence as a sport;… Read more »
constitutional republic not mob rule. and only the ten commandments are in stone
Well, the Constitution is not written in stone… but the khazarian “Georgia Guidestones” are.
https://youtu.be/4qJkVMdg19o?t=332