Bernard Samuel was the last Republican Mayor of Philadelphia, leaving office on January 7, 1952, when George VI was still King of England, Josef Stalin dictator of the Soviet Union, and Harry Truman President of the United States. Since then, there have been ten popularly elected Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, all of them Democrats. That’s 70 years, 7 months, and 25 days of unbroken Democratic rule in Philly.

His Honor the Mayor is upset, very upset, at the number of shootings in his city, but, of course, it’s not really his fault, is it?

Pa. ‘a Backward State’, Philly Mayor Says in Criticism of State Gun Laws

Kenney’s latest comments came after a triple shooting on the grounds of an elementary school in the Kensington neighborhood left three young men wounded, including a 17-year-old, shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday

By Rudy Chinchilla • Published August 31, 2022 • Updated on August 31, 2022 at 8:12 PM

Criticizing the state’s gun laws, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney on Wednesday called Pennsylvania a “backward state” and said its Legislature for the most part doesn’t care about its citizens.

Kenney made the comments in response to an NBC10/Telemundo 62 question about his support of stricter gun laws and a shooting that happened at a school in the predawn hours of Wednesday morning.

“We’re not gonna get gun control in Pennsylvania. This is a backward state whose Legislature for the most part doesn’t care about the health and welfare of its citizens,” Kenney said.

In the Pennsylvania, the state government sets the gun control laws, and the pre-emption law prohibits smaller jurisdictions from setting stricter restrictions or penalties on residents than the Commonwealth has in place. With one exception, a state law which allows felony rather than misdemeanor charges for illegal handgun possession, in Philadelphia alone, all of Pennsylvania is under the same firearms laws.

So, if the gun control laws are the pretty much uniform across the Commonwealth, and it is a lack of stricter firearms restrictions which has led to the homicide rate, shouldn’t the homicide rate be fairly similar across the Keystone State? As we noted just a few days ago, they aren’t:

In 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

Here’s how the actual numbers work out: there were 510 homicides among 11,398,903 Pennsylvanians not living in Philadelphia, for a homicide rate of 4.474 per 100,000 population, while there were 499 murders among 1,603,797 Philadelphians, which works out to a homicide rate of 31.114 per 100,000. If the gun laws are the problem, why aren’t the homicide rates for Philly and the rest of the Commonwealth fairly similar?^[1]Even as late as the end of August, I have been unable to find the ‘official’ statistics for the number of homicides statewide for 2021. With 562 murders in Philly in 2021, I’m sure … Continue reading

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, there were 364 homicides in Philly as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, August 31^st. That’s a 1.96% increase over the 357 on the same date last year, and 2021 not only set the city’s homicide record, but utterly destroyed the old record of an even 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990. Under His Honor the Mayor, Philly has seen two of the three highest murder totals since statistics were being kept. Yet, oddly enough, the gun control laws never changed! Oddly enough, under Mr Kenney’s immediate predecessor, Michael Nutter, murders decreased in the city, and as we noted on August 9^th, Philly had surpassed the entire year’s homicide total for every single year under Mr Nutter’s eight years in office.

The current homicide rate in Philadelphia is 1.4979 per day. During Mr Nutter’s eight years in office, the city never averaged as high as 1.00 killings per day.

And in all of that time, the firearms laws in the Keystone State were the same.

Depending on how you do the math, the city is on target for 546.75 and 573.02 murders in 2022.^[2]The 546.75 number is obtained by taking the current number of homicides per day, and multiplying by 365 days in the year. The 573.02 number is obtained by taking the percentage increase in homicides … Continue reading While we can’t know the final numbers yet, one thing seems certain: under Mayor Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, 2022 will ‘win’ either the gold or the silver medal for murders this year, and they’ll have three of the top four homicide numbers. Mr Kenney’s term doesn’t end until January of 2024, so, unless he resigns early, he’ll have yet another full year to lead the city to more than 500 murders.^[3]Mr Krasner was re-elected in 2021, and his term doesn’t expire until January of 2026. Miss Outlaw has no fixed term, but serves at the pleasure of the Mayor.

The outgoing mayor has for some time been outspoken about gun control and critical of what he characterizes as Republican inaction on the issue, both at the state and federal level. He has also been blunt when asked about gun violence in the city, and at times seemingly overwhelmed when discussing the growing problem.

In July, he had to apologize after saying he would “be happy” when he is no longer mayor. Those comments came after gunfire during the city’s annual July 4th fireworks show on the Ben Franklin Parkway sent crowds running and left two police officers shot.

Yeah, well the entire city will be happy when Mr Kenney is no longer Mayor, but it really doesn’t matter: whomever is elected to replace him will be another Democrat, and will be just as frustrated and just as bad.

Most of those killings have come by way of gunfire. The city controller’s office lists at least 332 fatal shootings as of Aug. 30. It also shows at least 1,266 nonfatal shootings.

The city’s shooting victims database shows 1610 shooting victims as of August 31^th of this year, but ‘only’ 1555 through August 31, 2021. There have been 55 more shootings, a 3.537% increase, and let’s face it: every shooting is an attempted murder.

There are, of course, no records of how many times people were shot at, but escaped without injury, or were so slightly wounded that they were able to flee the scene and treat their wounds without going to the hospital.

There’s actually a lot of blame to go around. The reaction to the unfortunate death-during-arrest of methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd turned loose the anger of the left, but that was two years ago, and killings in the City of Brotherly love have skyrocketed in the subsequent years. The election of a George Soros-sponsored defense attorney as the city’s top prosecutor has enabled a lot of bad guys to get away with slaps on the wrist . . . if even that much is also at fault. A stooge Police Commissioner with more interest in ‘diversity and inclusion’ than law enforcement, and who cannot attract new recruits to the police department only makes things worse.

But Mayor is the top job, the ultimate responsibility, and Jim Kenney, who served on the Philadelphia City Council for 23 years before running for Mayor — at 64 years of age, he has been running for or serving in city government for 32 years, half of his life, now — ought to know that. He asked for that job, and that responsibility. Yet he is shirking all responsibility, blaming everyone, or at least every Republican, but himself, for the downward slide of our nation’s sixth most populous city, a city with a proud and storied history that predates the founding of our nation, the city in which our Declaration of Independence was approved and signed, a city founded in 1682 by William Penn. Mr Kenney can throw shade at anyone and everyone he wishes, but in the end, he has been an utter failure, and everyone knows it.