You know, you just can’t win with trying to get gun nuts to be consistent. In the Philadelphia suburbs and the outlying rural areas, residents commonly refer to Philadelphia as “the Wild West” (they frequently throw in a few jolly racial slurs, too) but the NRA supporters absolutely refuse to allow Philadelphia legislators to do a damned thing about stopping the flow of gun into my city. The conservatives in the state legislature – the same people who scream like stuck pigs about “state’s rights” when anyone dares to suggest more federal gun control — are all too happy to allow poorly regulated states like Florida decide who gets to legally carry a weapon in Philadelphia.
Well, here’s your basic NRA principles in action, not far from my neighborhood:
When Marqus Hill was charged with attempted murder in 2005, Philadelphia police revoked his permit to carry a concealed weapon.
So, Hill, 28, applied for and was granted a gun permit from Florida, which must be honored in Pennsylvania because of a concealed-carry agreement between the states, police said.
On Sunday, Hill walked out of a house on Gale Street near B, in Olney, with a loaded gun – as he was licensed to do so with his Florida permit – after seeing some people break into his car, police said. He shot 18-year-old Irving Santana 13 times, killing him, police said.
Santana, of Fisher Street near 9th, and two others had been breaking into cars in the area but weren’t armed, police said.
Now, your typical gun nut doesn’t have a problem with executing an admittedly anti-social 18-year-old for a property crime (so much for the “pro life” philosophy!), but I’m still old-fashioned enough to believe in trial by jury and all that crazy American stuff. Many’s the teenager who straightened out as he aged, but Irving’s not going to get that chance.
Cops charged Hill, of Marshall Street near Cayuga, with murder and related offenses.
At a news conference yesterday, Deputy Police Commissioner William Blackburn blasted the loophole in state law that allowed Hill to legally carry a gun despite the Police Department’s best attempts to stop him.
“If we, in Philadelphia, deny someone the privilege to carry a handgun based on something in their background, they should not then be able to apply online and get a gun permit,” Blackburn said. “We would like to have that right reserved for us in the Philadelphia area.”
Lots of unstable and even criminally violent people get to carry weapons legally, thanks to the NRA and the Pavlov-trained legislators who wouldn’t dare to say no to them. Read “Packing Heat On Your Street,” from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.
