DN Editorial: A city's different

WE DIDN'T need Monday's bombings in Boston to understand a basic truth: Cities are places with their own particular dangers. The people who live in - and love - cities get this. But many who live elsewhere think of cities as problem-ridden hellholes, and anyone who lives in one gets what he or she deserves. That dichotomy helps explain why Pennsylvania has such a schizophrenic approach to guns - with laws based on ancient small-town mythologies, not 21st-century realities.

In recent years, the country has fostered two gun nations: the nation of chest-thumping faux patriots who refuse to acknowledge that guns can be used for evil, and who think the more guns the better, and the nation of those trying to survive urban streets ruled by illegal guns. Of the 331 homicides in the city last year, 86 percent were commited with guns, most of them illegal.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the pro-gun nation is making the laws for the other.

For years, Philadelphia and other cities around the state have been pleading with the state to recognize the difference and allow them to make gun laws pertinent to their cities. And as Monday's Daily News gun report pointed out, Philadelphia's gun problem continues to wreak havoc in deaths and injuries. It's a scene that gets played out in big cities across the country.

But, in Philadelphia, any attempt to regulate this madness - from a ban on assault weapons to mandated reporting for lost or stolen guns - gets shut down by Harrisburg. And so the streets are flooded with illegal guns, with no consequences for being caught with one.

Only one city, New York, seems to have taken action to turn the tide. New York City imposes a heavy penalty for being caught with an illegal gun - mandatory jail time - which has reduced gun crime dramatically.

We could do that here, too. That's what a bill by Sen. Larry Farnese and Rep. John Taylor would do: Impose a two-year mandatory sentence for possession of an illegal gun. This law would apply only to Philadelphia, which is a shame, since ours isn't the only city in the state with a gun-violence problem. Mayors from Allentown, Pittsburgh, Lancaster and other Pennsylvania cities have joined the chorus demanding that Harrisburg allow cities to make their own laws. The chorus continues to fall on deaf ears.

The time is right to start this battle again - to pressure Harrisburg to take its cities, and the lives of its citizens, seriously.

And while they may not be able to look at Congress for too many lessons in political courage, they should look to Connecticut. Its Legislature recently passed a slate of some of the toughest gun bills in the country - with major gun manufacturers headquartered a few miles from the statehouse. We shouldn't even have to look to the success of New York's law to see that this makes sense, and that it does nothing to infringe on the Second Amendment. Of course, the gun-loving chest-thumpers don't see it that way, and continue to resist these and other measures that could give our city - and others around the country, including Boston - a better margin of safety.