The shooting Monday night in Philadelphia was already weird. After all, the suspect arrested at the scene is…interesting, as we noted on Wednesday.

The most normal thing was local authorities trying to leverage this for gun control.

Now, it seems that the local authorities and the alleged shooter may have that in common.

The shooter accused of killing five people during a harrowing rampage in Southwest Philadelphia Monday night told police the shooting spree was an attempt to help authorities address the city’s gun violence crisis, and that a deity would be sending more people to help, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The assertions by [the alleged killer] were made to police in the hours after [the suspect] was arrested on the 1600 block of South Frazier Street, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

[The alleged killer] first told responding officers who made the arrest that they had done a good job, the sources said. [He] also told them the gunfire — which spanned several blocks and struck people, including two children, who had no apparent connection to one another — was an attempt to help police because “all these guys are out there killing people,” the sources said.

Now, part of this sure looks like he’s bucking for an insanity defense, which wouldn’t be surprising.

Yet this idea that this would spur gun control isn’t unique. We’ve seen it before, actually. In Louisville.

As I said then, we should never negotiate with terrorists. You don’t give people like this what they want because it’ll just encourage more to do the same thing. While Kentucky was smart and held firm, Tennessee’s governor took a shooting to roll over on his pro-gun credentials and start pushing for gun control. Not much, admittedly, but once the dam is broken, it’s kind of hard to put all the water back.

In this case, a clearly mentally disturbed individual killed five people all because he thought it would somehow address gun violence.

Admittedly, the term “gun control” wasn’t used, but just what else would someone like this be pushing for, anyway?

Regardless, Pennsylvania shouldn’t give in and pass anything in the wake of this awful tragedy.

If they do, they’ll only encourage the next gun control nutbar who decides to kill people as a way to push for anti-gun laws and doesn’t understand how to actually pass legislation, much less know anything about the Constitution.

What happened in Philadelphia is awful. It’s all the more awful because it was someone who was trying to affect political change through an act of violence. We call that terrorism, by the way, and it should be treated as such in my opinion.

We don’t negotiate with terrorists and we don’t give in to their demands, either. That should include gun control.

I’ve seen this accused killer identified as both a BLM supporter and a Donald Trump fan, so I don’t know that his politics or ideology fits neatly on the spectrum. But if his alleged comments are anywhere close to being accurately reported, it sounds like he needed some serious mental help long ago.