Officials in Philadelphia have been critical of the state of Pennsylvania’s preemption law. They argue that they need local gun control to stop the violence that has plagued the city over the last couple of years.

Of course, the fact that gun control doesn’t seem to be helping anywhere else is completely irrelevant to these officials.

I suspect the fact that some of their residents will do stuff like this is also something they’d rather ignore.

The 38-year-old man was shot three times in the chest and torso. The gunman and the man who was initially involved in the fight then fled the scene in a dark or Black Dodge Charger.

Less than a minute later, a man and a woman walking by found the 38-year-old victim on the sidewalk. The man stole the victim’s gun and handed it to the woman. He then stole other items from the victim’s pockets. The man and woman then fled the scene.

The 38-year-old victim was later taken to Temple University Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. Police have not yet revealed his identity.

Somehow, I suspect they didn’t fill out a Form 4473 for that.

Police believe they have the identity of the woman. If so, they’ll have the identity of the man soon enough. However, I can’t get past just how brazen this was.

I mean, these two robbed a dying man, taking not just his gun but other possessions too. It’s disgusting, to say the least.

However, it seems to me that a city that has people like this may have more going on than just an inability to pass local gun regulations. It has a certain lack of basic morality that will generally lead to a lack of respect for human life.

A city that has people that will rob a dying man and just waltz off with his gun is a city that’s going to have more than their fair share of potential killers.

Of course, to be completely fair, any city of any appreciable size is going to have those, even if they don’t have folks who would rob the dying.

Either way, it seems that a lack of gun control isn’t really the issue in Philadelphia.

Maybe officials there should start to work on instilling a sense of decency in the community and possibly improving police response times. After all, this incident started as a fight. Had the police arrived sooner, not only would a gun not be on the streets, a man just might not be dead.

Regardless, the sheer ridiculousness of this story tickles me in ways I have a hard time describing. It just seems like the perfect story to describe any number of major cities, truth be told, and not just Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, folks there like to look down on rural America as if there’s something wrong with folks who choose not to live in such close proximity with those who would steal from a man literally dying on the streets. I can’t imagine why they’d feel that way, though.