Philly Dem Mayor: US ‘Needs to Reexamine Its Conscience’

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, expressed outrage after the mass shooting in his city left five dead, calling for lawsuits to put gun sellers “out of business” and for the Second Amendment to be reexamined.

“I’m frustrated and outraged that mass shootings like this continue to happen in communities across the United States,” Kenney said Wednesday, reading a prepared statement at a news conference. “This country needs to reexamine its conscience and find out how to get guns out of dangerous people’s hands.”

Kenney called for greater gun control, including potential reform of the Second Amendment, after tragedy hit his city.

“A person walking down a city street with an AR-style rifle and shooting randomly at people while wearing a bulletproof vest with multiple magazines is a disgraceful but all too common situation in America,” he continued. “I was, today, at Independence Hall, where they wrote that Constitution, and the Second Amendment was never intended to protect this.”

Kenney added a call to sue the gun sellers “out of business.”

“The question I have is where does a person like this get an AR-15?” he told CBS-3 Philadelphia. “Where does a person like this get a semiautomatic handgun? Where does a person like this buy a Kevlar vest?

“We will figure out where he got those weapons, and that gun dealer or that gun show should be sued until they’re out of business. It’s just ridiculous. And I think every family member of someone who died or was injured in this incident should get together with a big law firm and take these gun dealers down.”

There were 16 mass shootings across the U.S. from Friday evening through Wednesday morning, leaving 15 dead and 94 injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as any in which four or more people are wounded or killed, not including the shooter.