Day: July 7, 2026

Paul Birdsong leads the Black Lion Party for International Solidarity, an armed, Black Panthers-inspired mutual aid group in Philadelphia.

Until February, the 39-year-old carried a firearm during the group’s neighborhood patrols to increase neighborhood safety. Then the police revoked his carry license. Four other Black Lion members lost their licenses the same week.

The city’s revocation letters, by published accounts, explained little. They cited “good cause” and Birdsong’s “character and reputation.”

They also pointed to a tense January 2026 encounter between a group of Black Lion members carrying rifles and a group of officers. The argument at a snowy intersection at 23rd and Diamond streets in North Philadelphia ended in hard words – but no arrests, citations or violence.

On June 9, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the Philadelphia Police Department’s licensing practices.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote to Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker that her office would examine whether the Philadelphia police can use a “vague ‘good cause’ standard” to cancel permits.

The Justice Department’s press release stated the rule directly: “It is a violation of the Second Amendment for government officials to use vague, personal discretion when determining whether to issue or revoke permits to carry firearms.”

Philadelphia’s unique gun laws

The prevalence of guns in Philadelphia has real public safety stakes. Gun violence in Philadelphia has fallen from its COVID-19 pandemic-era peak, when there were 562 gun homicides in 2021, but the problem remains serious.

As of late June 2026, city data shows 330 people were shot in Philadelphia so far this year, 71 of them fatally. Parker has made violence reduction central to her agenda. That context helps explain why officials may seek aggressive tools, even as the U.S. Constitution limits their discretion.

We are scholars of gun laws and the Second Amendment. One of us is a law professor at the University of Wyoming, co-author of “Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy” and an unpaid trustee of the National Rifle Association’s Civil Rights Defense Fund. The other is a law lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania who has taught firearms law across the state and country and is a board member of the National Rifle Association, and who has also represented the organization on a variety of matters prior to becoming a board member.

Philadelphia has long been the outlier in Pennsylvania when it comes to public carry. Public carry refers to legally carrying a firearm in public places, whether openly, where the gun is visible, or concealed, where the gun is hidden from public view. Pennsylvania adults may lawfully carry firearms openly without a license everywhere but in the city of Philadelphia. Statewide, a license is always required to carry concealed.

In Philadelphia, however, gun owners need a license to carry openly too. This exception is rooted in the Pennsylvania legislature’s public policy choices made decades ago.

But this Philadelphia-only firearms rule is under constitutional pressure. In 2025, in Commonwealth v. Sumpter, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania held it unconstitutional as applied. The state Supreme Court is now weighing the question.

Yet, for now, the statute remains on the books and still lets a license be revoked for “good cause” or because an official deems the holder’s “character and reputation” dangerous.

The Department of Justice says that’s a problem.

Supreme Court ruling on gun licenses

To understand the Department of Justice’s case against Philadelphia, it’s helpful to look back to 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In its 6-3 ruling along what are considered typical conservative-liberal lines, the court struck down a New York law that issued carry licenses only to applicants who showed special “proper cause.”

The court drew a clear line. A government may screen permit holders with “narrow, objective, and definite standards” – a background check, a safety course, fixed criteria an honest applicant can know and meet. What the government may not do, the justices ruled, is hinge the right on “the appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion.”

The majority added in its ruling, “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh condemned “open-ended” and “unchanneled discretion for licensing officials.”

The dissent saw it differently. Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, argued the court should have considered “the State’s compelling interest in preventing gun violence and protecting the safety of its citizens.” In that view, dense urban risks justify more room for local judgment.

But Bruen rejected that approach and ruled that the government’s interest in preventing violence cannot justify vague or open-ended discretion over who may exercise a constitutional right.

The problem with ‘good cause’ standards

If someone in Philadelphia wants to carry a gun, they must obtain a license to carry through the Philadelphia Police Department’s gun permit unit. But without an objective yardstick, two police officers can review the same file and make opposite decisions about the granting of a license.

With a subjective standard, an applicant who is quiet, polished and familiar to the licensing office may pass this test, while another who is equally law-abiding but perhaps less polished or more socially awkward may fail.

One officer might treat a passionate social media post as proof of instability; another might treat it as protected speech.

A rule-bound system asks whether the applicant is legally disqualified. A discretionary one asks whether the official is comfortable with the applicant.

That is how a constitutional right impermissibly becomes a discretionary privilege.

Suppose you could vote only if a clerk judged an applicant’s “character and reputation” sound. Suppose a parade permit could be revoked whenever the marchers’ conduct “troubled” police. That would be intolerable in any other setting – not because every voter or marcher is admirable, but because constitutional rights are not based on a government employee’s benevolent opinion.

Whether someone supports the Black Lions or finds their armed patrols unsettling is beside the point. When the test for stripping a right is “good cause” – words that mean whatever the person holding the stamp wants them to mean – the test itself violates the Constitution.

Other cities, including New York City and Boston, also administer gun-licensing systems with subjective moral-character or suitability standards. However, Pennsylvania’s “character and reputation” language is among the most open-ended, particularly as it relates to the revocation of licenses.

Whatever happened at 23rd and Diamond streets, the dispute is relevant to every gun permit holder in the city: May one of the largest police forces in the country switch a constitutional right on and off according to its own read of a person’s perceived suitability or reputation?

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Jonathan S. Goldstein, Esq. is a member of the board of directors of the National Rifle Association. He writes here in his individual capacity.

George A. Mocsary receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education to work at the Firearms Research Center at the University of Wyoming. He is also a volunteer Trustee of the Civil Rights Defense Fund.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

A number of recent high-profile congressional primaries in the Democratic Party have resulted in the nomination of unexpected candidates. Many of these winning candidates have unseated entrenched incumbents, as 29-year-old Colorado attorney Melat Kiros did to U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who has been serving in the House for three decades.

Some of these candidates are explicitly running under the banner of the Democratic Socialists of America, known as the “DSA,” a far-left organization known for standard-bearers such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. New York City’s charismatic mayor, Zohran Mamdani, won his election as a DSA member in 2025 and has since marshaled political support for fellow progressives running for other offices in the city he runs.

Mamdani loaned his star power to three New York progressives, two of them DSA members, in an ad featuring promises to “abolish ICE” and “end corporate greed.” All three went on win their congressional primaries in June 2026.

There is no doubt that the DSA is having a moment within the Democratic Party. And since their candidates in the midterm races are all but guaranteed to win their safely Democratic districts, I believe their influence is likely to be a major factor on Capitol Hill in the next Congress.

That’s especially the case if the Democrats win the House with a narrow margin. The cooperation and votes of a handful of DSA members could be crucial to Democrats’ ability to act effectively as a majority – or not.

That’s because the DSA’s far-left positions on issues such as healthcare in the form of Medicare for All, defunding the police and taxing the ultrawealthy are likely to divide the Democrats, many of whom are more moderate and/or represent conservative districts.

But as a political scientist who studies the many methods politicians have available to represent their constituents, I’m seeing a story that’s more complex than many inside or outside the Democratic Party convey.

Affiliation with the DSA, or even just a far-left ideology, explains only some of the insurgent wins seen in the primaries. In reality, the Democrats’ reckoning is more complicated.

Who is – and isn’t – a democratic socialist?

Ascertaining the influence of the DSA in the Democratic Party, or in American politics as a whole, means understanding its membership among both elites and its voters.

Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani are all well known, charismatic and proficient fundraisers on the left, as is Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a second DSA member of the House. And come January 2027, when a new Congress is seated, at least three more – the aforementioned Kiros of Colorado, along with Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, who won primaries in two heavily Democratic seats in New York in June – will almost certainly be added to their ranks. These figures have all won their nomination contests within the Democratic Party but describe themselves as, and received official endorsements from, the DSA.

Meanwhile, the number of voters who officially affiliate as dues-paying members of the DSA is also on the upswing, nearly doubling since Mamdani began his viral mayoral campaign in 2025. Like their candidates, these voters largely participate in Democratic primaries rather than hold their own third-party contests.

But the DSA’s total official membership remains at around 100,000: formidable, but a minuscule percentage of the population compared to the two major parties. And even among this year’s crop of insurgent Democratic candidates, most do not affiliate with the DSA, including a number of ideological progressives.

For example, Graham Platner, the Democrats’ embattled U.S. Senate nominee in Maine, is an economic progressive who boasts an early endorsement from Sanders. But in an interview late last year, Platner declined to be identified as a democratic socialist, saying, “It’s not my politics.”

Brad Lander, New York City’s former comptroller and city councilman who recently won the Democratic primary against incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, is also widely recognized as a progressive – and was backed by Mamdani – but does not currently affiliate with the DSA.

Not all insurgent candidates are alike

Even among this cycle’s insurgent progressives, political ideology is not the only differentiating element that seems to matter to Democratic primary voters.

And the democratic socialists’ far-right 2010s counterpart, the tea party, can help shed light on these nonideological factors.

The tea party emerged during Barack Obama’s presidency as a far-right ideological movement with an ostensible focus on fiscal conservatism. And in my own research with Stella Rouse and Kristen Essel, we found that tea party-affiliated state legislators were more ideologically conservative in their voting records.

These legislators were also more likely to be white, to have served in the military and to be religiously observant. Other research has identified the tea party movement driven just as much by Obama-era racial backlash as it was by the movement’s stated fiscal concerns.

Most importantly, we found that tea party-affiliated lawmakers in state legislatures shared a number of anti-establishment tendencies and characteristics. They were less likely to have held previous elected office, to have sought party leadership positions or to have worked with the party before holding office.

Many of these same differentiating elements, such as racial and ethnic identity or a distaste for the established way of conducting politics, are clearly factors among insurgent Democrats this cycle, DSA or not.

Race, age, Israel and Palestine

Many, for example, would add to the ranks of nonwhite members of Congress if elected in November; and nearly all have either questioned or explicitly dismissed the idea of retaining Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries – both New York Democrats – as the party’s congressional leaders.

Age is a related emerging factor in Democratic primaries, which are producing many young nominees.

Kiros, Chevalier and Valdez are 29, 32 and 36, respectively. In the Democratic primary, Platner, 41, beat back Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, who is 78.

And in New York’s 12th District, two comparatively young Democrats, Micah Lasher and Alex Bores, were the top two vote-getters in the race to succeed U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, 79, who finally relented to calls for his retirement due to his advanced age. Lasher won the primary and is nearly assured of a win in the heavily Democratic district.

In still other cases, insurgent candidates – DSA or not – have adopted positions on specific issues that mark them as a new generation of Democrats. Most prominent, and controversial, among these is their backlash against Israel, which has propelled an increasing number of pro-Palestine candidates to nomination, often over long-serving incumbents.

For example, the recently defeated Goldman in New York had continued to stake out pro-Israel positions, even as the Democratic Party has increasingly soured on that nation’s actions in Gaza. Goldman’s victorious opponent, Lander, made these positions a relentless focus of his campaign.

What does the DSA mean for Democrats?

It is all but guaranteed that next year’s Congress will feature more democratic socialists than this one. But it is also clear that not all of this cycle’s insurgent Democrats share that label, and that they differ from longer-serving Democrats in more ways than one.

In our research, we found that the tea party was best understood as a “factional group” rather than a separate party, and that its goal was to transform the Republican Party “in ways that go beyond ideology.” Given the U.S.’s entrenched two-party system, this may be the most accurate way to understand the new roster of insurgent Democrats, whether they identify as democratic socialists or not.

Regardless of these candidates’ motivations or DSA affiliations, the Democratic Party will need to reckon with their divergent ways of representing their constituents, particularly if the party retakes one or both chambers of Congress next year. If the factionalism tearing through the current Republican majority is any indication, the Democrats should probably prepare for some new and sharper divisions in their own ranks.

Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation