‘Justified’: Stats Show Legal Gun-Owners In Philly Active In Self Defense

Eric Scheiner | June 22, 2022
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The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that justified homicides in the city have jumped 67% from 2020 to 2021.

“So far in 2022, victims have shot at least eight armed assailants to death, with more than seven months remaining in the year,” according to the Inquirer when viewing last month's justifiable homicide numbers.

While the overall tone of the piece published Monday is critical of legal gun ownership, even they can’t ignore compelling stories of residents who armed themselves.

“In May, a South Philadelphia man stepped out of his house for a smoke when police said a gun-wielding man rode up on a bicycle and demanded money. The homeowner dropped his cigarette, pulled out his licensed gun, and fatally shot the would-be robber in the head.

In March, an assistant manager at a Dollar General store in North Philadelphia used his legal gun to shoot a man who police said burst into the store in a ski mask, demanded money, and threatened to kill the cashier. ‘I’m opening up the register for you, sir,’ said the manager, who instead pulled his own handgun and shot the robber in the head, killing him.

The same month, a customer with a carry permit inside Max Food Market in the Yorktown section fatally shot a gunman who tried to rob him while he was playing a video poker machine. ‘You have to defend yourself,’ said Maximo Torres Rodriquez, the store’s owner. ‘You have to do it.’

State Police records show that handgun purchases in the city have more than doubled in the last two years. Requests for gun permits have also surged to 52,000 last year, up nearly 7 times over 2020 numbers.

However, Mensah Dean of the Inquirer is quick to note, “Numerous studies have found that guns legally purchased are used far less for self defense and are more likely to be used in unintentional and criminal shootings and in suicides.”

Dean fails to mention the recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finding that burglaries are more likely to occur in neighborhoods with fewer gun permits among residents. Or that According to the FBI’s expanded homicide data for 2020, law enforcement used firearms 298 times in fatal line-of-duty shootings, while private citizens killed 343 suspected felons ‘during the commission of a felony.’

Related: Intellectual Ammunition: Mythology v Facts of 'Gun Control'

Strange that Dean didn’t load those studies into his story on “justifiable homicide,” isn’t it?

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