You would wish that some people, like Mayor Jim Kenney, would have the foresight to declare a state of emergency on gun violence, prevalent in the city. But as it turns out he just doesn’t think it’s all that important. During a briefing on gun violence, Jim Kenney wasn’t really so shakey on his perspectives of gun violence. The Mayor literally said “I do not believe that a local emergency declaration will have any benefit for Philadelphia.” Like, what type of mayor says that? In the past week alone, there was a spike of homicides hitting the milestone of 309 homicides. No thanks to a triple shooting of teenagers resulting in two death streaks.
But, surely Mayor Kenney has better perspectives. He just doesn’t want to share them.
Meanwhile, folks like Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw says that “we’re experiencing one of the worst periods of violent crime in our city’s history.” She went on to share plenty of statistics that we rather would not have heard at all. “Our number of shooting victims are up 33% over the same time last year. And to date, there have been 1,289 shooting victims, 123 of these shooting victims are juveniles, 17 years of age or under.”
Now, Mayor Kenney is being as superbly diplomatic as possible regarding all of this. But truly he is being a little ignorant. “I called the rise in gun violence a public health emergency and our administration has been working on evidence-based interventions to stem the tide of violence.” Sure, he’s said that. But he’s also made it known that him and the governor talk about it as a possibility for a state order. “And we’ll continue those discussions. But a local declaration won’t unlock new funding, we’ve already done that.” Dude is just being very vague. And yet he realizes that residents are subject to more haunting statistics. 3,364 guns were found in the city so far. 37% more than last year. Good grief.
