u/lhorace

What's your opinion?

So it was hot in Philadelphia, 105f, I waited to it cool door. Accept an order and thunderstorm alert.

She at least gave me a 10 dollar tip doh

Quick context: I'm 44, so not exactly your target Reddit demo, figured I'd say that upfront rather than have someone guess. Pulled this from PA/Philly DA and PD data, not a criminologist, just found the specifics more interesting than the usual talking points on both sides. Grain of salt, happy to be corrected.

In 2023, Pennsylvania traced 17,027 recovered crime guns, and Philly accounted for 6,316 of them, over a third of the state total. Of the traced guns, 78 percent came from licensed dealers in PA. That stat gets thrown around a lot, but here's the part that usually gets left out: those guns were rarely used in crimes by the person who originally bought them. Almost all of them get diverted afterward, mostly through straw purchases, into the illegal market. The dealer sale is the origin point, not where it goes wrong.

The DA's office has prosecuted 559 people since 2018 for straw purchasing, tied to more than 4,900 guns. One detail I didn't expect: women commit under 10 percent of Philly's violent shootings but make up 24 percent of straw purchasing arrests, often with no prior record, pulled in by a partner or associate who's legally barred from buying. Add that 95 percent of stolen guns stay in-state, mostly stolen from private citizens rather than stores, and a pattern shows up: straw buyers, a small number of non-compliant dealers, and theft.

So when people say "most crime guns came from a legal dealer" like it's a gotcha for legal ownership, I think that's missing the actual mechanism. The data suggests the leverage point is prosecuting straw purchasing and diversion, not restricting the person doing a background check at the counter.

Curious what people think, especially if you've got sourcing that complicates or contradicts this.

Edit: Want to clarify my position since a few people asked. I'm for gun rights, I'd like to own one myself someday, though I hope to god I'd never actually have to use it. Wanted to be upfront about where I'm coming from.

I ride in Philly with a ridiculous number of potholes, so for me fat tires are about stability, not looks. I know a lot of people go fat tire just for the aesthetic, but I need that extra contact patch to handle bad pavement.

Trolley tracks are the other big reason. I've seen thin tires catch in the rail gap or slide out mid turn, while a fat tire just rolls right over them. Same with rain, the wider tire and aggressive tread give me way more traction on wet pavement and steel crossings.

Downside is weight. Alloy rims plus everything else puts my bike around 80 pounds, which is part of why I run a 1000W motor instead of 500W, you need the power to move that mass.

Where do you all land on this? Stability and traction, or weight savings and speed?

EDIT One of my pet peeves I forgot to add about fat tires. I had a EBIKE with thin tires that I can use the bike rack on a bus. Fat tires, if the bus driver is nice enough and let me get on with it. I am out of luck.

So back when I started doing food delivery, I bought a $549 ebike off Amazon. Specs looked solid on paper — 20Ah battery, 750W motor (1000W peak), fat tires on spoke wheels, should've been a beast for range. In practice? 30 minutes just to get to my delivery zone, then only 3 hours of active delivery time before I needed to start thinking about the 30 minutes back home. And the second I hit an incline during that window, I'd watch that battery meter just drain in real time. Got genuinely nervous a few times and had to call it early.

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Eventually upgraded to a $1,400 bike from a local shop. Same fat tires, but alloy wheels instead of spoke, heavier overall, 1100W motor, and a smaller 14Ah battery. By spec sheet logic — more power, more weight, less battery — this should've been worse, easy.

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Instead: an hour to get to my zone (longer trip, more distance covered), still 3 hours of active delivery time, and still about 30 minutes of charge left to get home after all that.

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20Ah losing to 14Ah, despite more weight and more wattage and covering more ground just to get started. Blasphemy.

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Honestly I'm not knowledgeable enough to say exactly why — I just know what I experienced. Maybe it's the wheels, maybe the build quality, maybe something else entirely.

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Anyone else have a battery rating not match up with the bike's actual performance? What was your explanation for it?

Yesterday in Center City was pure chaos, and it highlighted just how terrible our current urban planning is. There were thousands of people everywhere, the police were constantly blaring sirens racing to various incidents, and the gridlock actually caused a major accident right in front of me.

A pickup truck tried to pull over to clear a path for a cop car and ended up sideswiping a Mercedes. I felt awful for the truck driver—now they have to deal with insurance and skyrocketing premiums just because the city completely failed to manage the flow of the area. Even grabbing food was a mess; a simple order at Wendy's took 25 minutes because everything was so overwhelmed.

Trying to navigate through that on an e-bike felt genuinely unsafe. When Center City is expecting massive crowds like this, the city needs to shut down core streets to personal vehicular traffic entirely. Forcing or heavily incentivizing people to use public transit instead of letting cars clog the grid into a standstill would keep emergency lanes clear and prevent accidents like the one I saw. The City Planning Commission and PennDOT need to do better.

I’ve been looking into Mayor Parker’s “One Philly, One Future” budget proposal for next year. It promises a lot for our quality of life—specifically around cleaning up the city and increasing public safety.

While the plan includes some tax cuts (like the Business Income & Receipts Tax), it also relies on increased funding and shifts in how our tax dollars are collected. I’m curious where everyone else stands on this.

A few things on my mind:

The Trust Gap: Do you feel confident that this administration will deliver on these "Clean and Green" promises?

Fiscal Accountability: Should we be talking about tax changes before a thorough audit of how our current budget is being spent?

The "Cycle": It feels like we often see the same policies with different names. Interestingly, only about 30% of voters in our city turned out for the last election. Does this low engagement contribute to the feeling that things never change?

I haven’t followed local politics closely in the past, but I’m trying to start now. I'd love to hear your take—whether you're optimistic about the "One Philly" vision or skeptical about the costs.

What are your top priorities for our neighborhood right now?

I was looking at the FY2026 budget proposal, and the PPD is slated for roughly $872 million (a $20M increase over last year). As someone who spends a lot of time biking the city, I’m struggling to see where that investment hits the pavement.

In my experience, "beat cops" feel nonexistent, and property crime reports (like bike theft) seem to be treated as a clerical formality rather than an investigation. I’ve been told by officers that "nothing will happen" regarding theft unless the dollar amount is extreme.

I know there is a lot of back-and-forth about the DA vs. the PPD, but I’m interested in the operational side:

1. If the budget is increasing, why does the patrol presence feel so stationary?
2. Is the "Inspector-only" response for serious shootings a result of staffing shortages or a shift in policy?
3. How can we advocate for better investigative follow-up on "quality of life" crimes that affect us daily?

Looking for a real discussion on how these funds are being allocated and if anyone else is seeing a disconnect between the budget and the street-level reality.

I have a EBike and the range I am comfortable with is 30 miles. I am 44. And looking for local people who enjoy bike riding. Leave a comment below 👇 if you are interested. Thanks.