In Pennsylvania, you don’t need a permit to openly carry a firearm… unless you’re trying to do so in the City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia’s exception, however, was the subject of an appellate court opinion issued last June that held the permitting requirement was unconstitutional as it applied to a man named Riyaadh Sumpter, who was convicted and sentenced to a year’s probation for openly carrying without a license.
A similar case is now pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but while the litigation continues the Philadelphia Police Department is still issuing open carry permits… and revoking them as well.
Paul Birdsong, the leader of Philadelphia’s armed citizens group the Panthers, gripped a walkie-talkie in one hand and an AR-12 semiautomatic shotgun in the other.
He was inside the Panthers’ headquarters, a modest two-story rowhouse in a bustling section of West Philadelphia. Stacks of books with titles like Black American Military History filled the room, the walls scrawled with drawings of jungle cats stepping defiantly on the heads of cartoonish police officers.
Near Birdsong’s feet was a bullet-riddled target, not far from a gun rack that held rifles and the shotgun the 39-year-old grabbed enthusiastically midconversation and kept casually at his side.
Until February, Birdsong carried the gun during armed patrols throughout the city alongside other members of the Panthers, an emerging local offshoot of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, the historic political and militant organization.
Now the weapon stays behind doors.
Recently Birdsong learned the police department had revoked his license to carry firearms, saying he posed a threat to public safety after he confronted a police officer during an armed patrol in January.
The following month, Birdsong and four other members of the Panthers received letters informing them their gun permits had been terminated. He and his lawyer say the action is a violation of their constitutional right to bear arms.
I think the permits themselves are the bigger issue, at least from a constitutional perspective. As the Superior Court of Pennsylvania concluded, there is no way that the entirety of Philadelphia can be deemed a “sensitive place” where permits are required (or open carry prohibited altogether), there are no historical analogues in Pennsylvania law that remotely resemble an outright ban openly carrying, and the fact that the licensing regime is limited solely to Philadelphia imposes an unfair (and unlawful) burden on residents of the city compared to those who live in every other part of the state.
If Birdsong really poses a threat to public safety, then the Philly police should have arrested him, and D.A. Larry Krasner should be prosecuting him. Neither of those things have happened, however. Instead, the police department claims that Birdsong and his compatriots because of their “character and reputation.” That sounds an awful lot like the subjective licensing standards that were struck down by the Supreme Court in Bruen; if the police don’t think you’re worthy of obtaining a license then you don’t get one, not because of objective standard, but based on the department’s subjective assessment of a permit holder’s character.
Birdsong’s attorney Lyandra Retacco has filed for an injunction that would allow him to keep his permit, and the Inquirer reports that a hearing is scheduled for later this summer. With any luck the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will have weighed in by then and concurred with the Superior Court’s decision that the entire permitting scheme for open carry is unconstitutional.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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