Democratic Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney, who during last year's historic crime wave cut police funding, wants to throw a man in jail for defending himself during a mass shooting, even as the city's far-left district attorney admits the man was acting in self-defense.
Prosecutors told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Gregory Jackson, 34, shot Micah Towns, 23, leading Towns to return fire and kill Jackson. In the melee that followed, a third man, Quran Garner, 18, pulled a gun and began firing into a nearby crowd. While police told the Inquirer that "the precise sequence of the confrontation was unclear" and that more gunmen might have been involved, the incident left 3 people dead and 12 wounded.
Kenney said during a virtual gun-violence briefing that "anybody who fired a gun that day should be locked up." The mayor said Towns, who remains hospitalized in critical condition, is partially responsible for escalating the shooting because he didn't walk away from the fight.
Kenney's call to jail Towns comes as mainstream media sources claim that "a good guy with a gun" is "a myth" and "a deadly American fantasy." Towns is far from the only armed individual to try to stop a mass shooting, however. Just weeks earlier, an armed off-duty Border Patrol agent helped evacuate Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, during the May 24 mass shooting at the school.
Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner (D.), a soft-on-crime prosecutor who has received more than a million dollars from liberal megadonor George Soros, blasted the mayor's words, saying Towns was acting in self-defense.
Kenney is "not a cop" and "not an attorney," a Krasner spokeswoman told the Inquirer. "We cannot invent crimes that don’t exist and facts that aren't true."
The mayor's stance on fighting gun crime does not involve providing more resources to law enforcement. As Philadelphia last year saw homicides reach an all-time high, Kenney reduced the police force's budget by 2.4 percent.
Kenney's office did not respond to a Washington Free Beacon request for comment.