INSANE GUN OPPONENTS IN PHILADELPHIA

While murder rates have been falling or flat for years in the rest of the country, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia's rate has been rising. Last year's murder rate was the highest since 1993, and Philadelphia replaced Chicago, the perennial leader, as the top 10 largest city with the highest murder rate. With 85 murders in this year's first 82 days, Philadelphia's murder rate is well ahead of even last year's level.

Unfortunately, Mayor John Street's solution may affect the rest of the state. He mentions nothing about fixing the city's declining arrest rates for murder. Instead he blames the law-abiding citizens who have permits to carry concealed handguns. And he recently announced that the city will deliberately begin delaying issuing new concealed-handgun permits. Gov. Ed Rendell's proposed crime task force promises to examine the issue further.

None of Philadelphia's reporters seem to have asked Mayor Street or Gov. Rendell the obvious question: If permit holders are the problem, how many of these 85 murders were caused by a person with a permitted concealed handgun? When I asked, the city police and mayor's office were unable or unwilling to answer that question. But my guess is zero. To put it simply, in those extraordinarily rare cases when permit holders get in trouble, there is news coverage -- and there is not one single news story on such a case this year.

Indeed, with 28,000 concealed-handgun permit holders in Philadelphia and more than 600,000 in the state, there wasn't such a murder last year or the year before or the year before that in the entire state. There are only two such cases since the state law started in 1989.

Instead, in Philadelphia there are a number of cases such as this: Last December a robber shot at a deliveryman despite being given all his money and only then did the deliveryman use his permitted concealed handgun to wound the robber. There are dramatic cases statewide. A couple of years ago, a serial rapist in Pittsburgh was wounded by his sixth intended victim, who had a permitted concealed handgun. Of course, in addition to self-defense, others who would never even think of carrying a gun also benefit because criminals don't know in advance who can protect themselves.

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Georgia: Father shoots intruder to protect daughter "An Atlanta man says he shot an intruder into his home to protect his daughter. Amos Evans said his home has been broken into three times over the last two months. Evans said his home was again broken into Tuesday morning while his 7-year-old daughter was taking a bath. 'I heard some glass break and I thought maybe she fell or hurt herself in the bathroom, so I ran in there and when I looked to my left I saw this guy who had busted the glass and was coming through my apartment,' Evans said. 'I asked him to stop, he didn't stop, I ran in my room got my gun, cocked it, and got off one shot,' he said. Atlanta police say the intruder fled after being shot in the chest. He was later found near Daniel and Gartrell streets."


Carnival of Cordite is up again. I note a post there saying that the allegedly factual site Snopes is anti-gun. They are in fact a very Leftist site in general. A few small mistakes in a post will cause them to put a big red "False" label on it if it is pro-conservative -- even though the story may be broadly correct.