The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has, fortunately for the individual rights of the citizens thereof, a state legislature controlled by Republicans, and current state law prohibits cities in the Keystone State from enacting their own, stricter gun control ordinances.

Naturally, in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, the Democrats who have controlled the city government or the last 69½ years, see the homicide numbers, and think that the answer is: more gun control! The Philadelphia Inquirer keeps up its calls:

• As Philly’s gun violence continues, city officials call on legislators to enact more gun control measures
• New metal detectors make the Capitol look like public schools. Will this push lawmakers toward gun control? | Opinion
• The impeachment trial is over. So is the Senate’s excuse for inaction on guns. | Editorial
• What’s the point in having gun control if Philadelphia doesn’t enforce it? | Editorial

But it was a sad story in Thursday’s Inquirer which revealed the futility of it all, without ever mentioning the subject:

Philly father sentenced to 6 to 12 years in prison after his teen son fatally shot his twin brother

Aleem Gillard encouraged his sons to play with a gun in his apartment and one son, Fayaadh, accidentally killed his brother, Suhail, authorities said.

By Julie Shaw | June 3, 2021

A Philadelphia man was sentenced Thursday to six to 12 years in state prison after one of his twin sons accidentally shot the other after he encouraged them to play with his gun in an Overbrook apartment two years ago.

Aleem Gillard, 43, pleaded guilty in February to charges of involuntary manslaughter and possession of a firearm. As a felon, he was not permitted to have a gun.

On Dec. 1, 2019, Gillard’s 18-year-old sons and 16-year-old daughter were in his apartment when his sons were playing with his gun, and one son, Fayaadh, fatally shot his brother, Suhail, in the chest.

Chesley Lightsey, supervisor of the DA’s homicide unit, told Common Pleas Court Judge Lillian Ransom during a virtual sentencing hearing Thursday that the father encouraged his sons to play with the gun. After the shooting, authorities said, Gillard told his surviving son and daughter to lie to police, telling them the teen was shot while going to a corner store. He also had his daughter hide the gun, she said.

The money paragraph was further down:

Aleem Gillard had four prior convictions for illegal gun possession, Lightsey said. In the most recent case, court records show, he pleaded guilty in February 2015 to felony firearm-possession charges stemming from a 2013 arrest and was sentenced to 2½ to five months in jail and 10 years’ probation.

So, Mr Gillard had four prior convictions for illegal gun possession, was not, as a convicted felon, allowed to own a firearm, and was on probation at the time his son was shot, yet he still had a gun! In 2013, Mr Gillard was shot himself, paralyzed, and is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, yet he still had a gun.

If all of that could not keep Mr Gillard from obtaining yet another firearm, just what other gun control laws would have prevented it? What laws would the bad guys of the City of Brotherly Love, who have already put 221 people in their graves, obey in a city that has people like Mr Gillard, already a jailbird, already a convicted felon, already paralyzed for life, choosing to keep a gun despite all of that?