Last year, Philadelphia had over four hundred homicides, 82 percent by guns — the highest percentage of any big city in the country. And yet, only 7 percent of weapons arrests made by Philly police in recent years have resulted in significant jail sentences for guntoting, repeat criminals. The city may have a tough-on-crime mayor, a strong district attorney’s office, a reinvigorated police department, and a growing number of community-based prevention programs. But they have proved at last no match for Philadelphia’s criminal-court judges who fail — whether through incompetence, inability to understand the damage done to their city, or entrenched bias — to enforce the law. When a judge lets an armed repeat offender go because (as he explained to a local reporter) it was “only a gun case,” something is deeply out of order.