Key Takeaways
- The Justice Department launched a federal civil rights investigation into the Philadelphia Police Department’s handling of firearm carry licenses.
- The probe looks into whether the city unlawfully revokes these licenses based on vague personal discretion.
- Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon aims to defend citizens’ rights under the Second Amendment and address potential abuses in the permitting system.
- Recent revocations of carry permits for members of the ‘Panthers’ highlight concerns over the subjective nature of permit decisions.
- Investigators may seek remedies or pursue federal court action if they find a pattern of civil rights violations in the permitting process.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
PHILADELPHIA, PA — The Justice Department has opened a federal civil rights investigation into whether the Philadelphia Police Department is unlawfully denying and revoking licenses to carry firearms.
I read the June 9 letter the Civil Rights Division sent to Mayor Cherelle Parker. It confirms the department’s Second Amendment Section will examine how the city issues and revokes carry licenses, and whether officials rely on vague, personal discretion to do it.
The authority behind the probe is the federal pattern-or-practice statute, 34 U.S.C. § 12601, the same tool long used to investigate police misconduct. This time it is aimed at a permitting system, with the department assessing Philadelphia under both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said she directed the Second Amendment Section to “defend law-abiding citizens from local authorities who infringe” carry rights.
The constitutional issue is clear. Heller affirmed the right to keep and bear common arms in 2008. In 2022, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen ended the practice of letting officials grant or deny carry permits on personal discretion. A “good cause” test is exactly the subjective gatekeeping Bruen rejected.
Philadelphia raises the stakes. Across most of Pennsylvania, open carry is legal without a license, so a denied permit still leaves a lawful way to carry. Philadelphia is the exception, where a license is required to carry at all in public. That means a revocation by the permit unit does not just end concealed carry, it disarms the person on the street entirely.
The probe follows reporting, first published by Axios, that the department revoked the carry permits of five members in February. The five belong to the “Panthers,” a local armed group that models itself on the 1960s Black Panther Party and runs armed patrols and anti-ICE actions around the city. The revocation letters cited good cause along with the members’ character and reputation. The reported trigger was a January confrontation between the group’s leader, Paul Birdsong, and an officer during an armed patrol in North Philadelphia. Birdsong has appealed and calls the revocation unconstitutional.
I will be straight with you. The Panthers are not a group most of my readers will line up behind, and their politics are not mine. That is exactly the point. A standard loose enough to strip these five of their carry rights on an official’s say-so is loose enough to strip anyone’s. The Second Amendment does not check your voter registration first. If good cause and character and reputation can disarm a group the city dislikes today, the same discretion can come for you tomorrow.
More from USA Carry:
The department drew a careful line. Its letter says the investigation covers “the lawful exercise of rights only” and does not condone armed criminal activity or obstruction of law enforcement. The target is the standard, not any single encounter.
No conclusions have been reached. If investigators find a pattern of violations, the department says it will seek a remedy with the city and can take the matter to federal court if no agreement is reached.
A federal civil rights probe built to protect the right to carry, rather than restrict it, is a notable turn. I will follow where this one goes.
