Good Guy with a Gun #27: Philadelphia

Original incident: Thanksgiving, November 23, 2023. A very short story: An intruder entered an upscale apartment in Philly. The resident was armed.

I’m thankful for my readers and, of course, our ability to defend ourselves against evils in the world.

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It was Thanksgiving evening 2023, around 7:20 PM, and residents of some upscale apartments in Philly were still trickling back from family dinners.

A man in his 20s penetrated into the apartments. It’s not clear how or why he chose to enter this apartment building, nor why he decided to enter someone’s apartment.

It was a bad choice: The tenant was home and armed. He confronted the intruder and, at some point, shot him in the head. The intruder died at the scene.

Two guns were recovered at the scene. One, of course, would be from the tenant; no news source reported on whether the other was from the intruder or the tenant’s second. It seems likely that the second gun recovered belonged to the intruder.

The tenant was taken into custody, which is fairly ordinary procedure, but there’s no indication that he was ever charged. It seems unlikely that he would be. Newsweek, of all places, gave a quick statement about Pennsylvania law: “The use of force upon or toward another person is justifiable when the actor believes that such force is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting himself against the use of unlawful force by such other person on the present occasion.” In addition, Pennsylvania’s duty to retreat has an exception when the threat is in your own home and you have a reasonable belief that you need to exercise deadly force to prevent death or serious bodily harm.

Other residents were, naturally, upset about the incident. “I thought maybe somebody got through the door here but not into somebody’s individual apartment — that’s frightening,” neighbor Keenan Walker told reporters.

There’s obviously a lot here we don’t know: Why the intruder was there, how he got in, whether he was armed, what the confrontation looked like, whether there was a relationship between him and the resident. The information we have about the shooting is minimal and clinical, reported with no emotion, even though it represents a life-changing moment for the resident and a life-ending moment for the intruder.

The reporting spends a lot of time on things we do know, like the fact that the front door was propped open and an email was sent to the other residents letting them know what happened.

What’s truly important shouldn’t be lost in the minutiae: A good guy with a gun defended himself against a (likely) armed intruder.

Sources

Local news coverage was all very similar, with Fox 29, 6 ABC, and Philly Voice. As noted in the summary, Newsweek not only covered this local news story, but gave additional commentary about the law and another self-defense incident in Florida.

I didn’t see this story covered by any of the usual 2A commentariat.

That thing that never happens, happens every day.

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