Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
The city of Philadelphia is like a lot of other large American cities. They’re cities that are seemingly plagued with violent crime and are reaching out for some kind of solution. Unfortunately, the only thing they can think of as a solution is gun control.
Obviously, that’s an issue everywhere. However, it seems that Philadelphia has a bigger issue.
You see, the city of Brotherly Love of Trying To Control Your Rights can’t seem to control the guns they actually own.
Philly, we’ve got a problem.
The city that’s got a mayor waging a gun control campaign against law-abiding gun owners can’t account for more than 200 of their own guns. Philadelphia’s Sheriff’s Office was blamed in a report for failing to account for 210 taxpayer-funded service firearms and firearms that were seized. They went missing between 1977-2015, but only came to light in 2019 when a confidential complaint tipped off authorities that “15 long guns” were missing.
That began an investigation that showed the city’s missing guns issue was 173 percent bigger than what was first believed. The people tasked with enforcing laws, including court security and prisoner transfers, couldn’t follow their own regulations and keep track of their guns.
Philadelphia’s gun control cabal, including Democrat Mayor Jim Kenney, is sure to miss the irony here. For clarity’s sake, this is the situation detailed clearly. The same people who want to use law enforcement to curb the gun rights of law-abiding citizens and track and confiscate guns can’t even keep track and control of the ones for which they’re responsible. Officials are saying there’s nothing to see here, move along. It was a problem with the old regime.
A year-long investigation by the City Controller’s office blames “physical disorganization,” and “poor record keeping” by the sheriff’s office. That might have been obvious when investigators saw firearms in piles on the floor and haphazardly stored. Firearms belonging to the sheriff’s office and those that were seized were comingled and some were still loaded when stored.
There are a large number of guns that the city simply doesn’t know where the hell they came from. They don’t know if the city bought them, took them from some criminal, or what. They’re simply in limbo.
And these are people who think they should be able to tell the citizens of that city what to do with their own firearms.
Honestly, it’s downright baffling that anyone would trust such incompetence with the power to restrict anyone else’s rights. Of course, as noted above, the city is trying to blame the old regime. The problem with that is that it’s clear no one knows what’s going on. With 200 government-owned firearms missing, a number of guns they simply don’t know where they came from, and no way to resolve the issue, it’s clear that the problems are systemic and ongoing.
And yet, these are also the only people some think should be trusted with firearms in the first place. Please excuse me as I laugh hysterically at such a notion.
Unfortunately, those people also seem to be set to take power at the national level in January, so I won’t be laughing too hard.
Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. He also puts out a daily newsletter of non-Second Amendment stories at https://tomknighton.substack.com/
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/11/28/cant-keep-up-with-their-guns/