filed nearly three years ago<\/a>, charged that Frank\u2019s Gun Shop and Delia\u2019s Gun Shop in Northeast Philadelphia, and Tanner\u2019s Sports Center in Bucks County repeatedly sold guns to customers who were obviously \u201cstraw\u201d purchasers; that is, people who buy guns intending to sell them to felons and others who aren\u2019t legally permitted to own guns.<\/p>\nThe suit said that from 2018 to 2022, police recovered 1,300 guns involved in crimes that were bought at just those three stores, including 158 that were straw purchases. It also charged that the three gun stores cost the city millions of dollars by selling to straw purchasers.<\/p>\n
The suit was set to go to trial this month but on Friday, Delia\u2019s former owner declared bankruptcy, ending its defense. The former owners of Frank\u2019s and Tanner\u2019s had already agreed to stop selling guns and Tanner\u2019s former owner turned over its insurance coverage to the city.<\/p>\n
Chief Deputy Solicitor Lydia Furst handled the litigation for the city. \u201cIt seems to us that in all cases, the stores saw that they didn\u2019t really stand a chance at trial because we had strong evidence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
According to Furst, Tanner\u2019s insurance coverage could allow the city to recover up to $11.9 million. She added, though, that the settlement achieves the suit\u2019s broader goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really, really great result because all three of these gun shops, which we identified as being the worst actors in the city, are now out of business,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Tanner\u2019s and Delia\u2019s are still operating under the same name but with new ownership. Frank\u2019s owner now leases his shop to a store called \u201cTons of Guns.\u201d None of the former owners could be reached and their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia\u2019s lawsuit against three gun shops for alleged illegal sales has been settled, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31,40209,2676,69,71,70,82578],"class_list":["post-184929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-crime","tag-guns","tag-lawsuit","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-straw-purchases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}