Rendell’s Anti-Gun Rights Bills

(Judiciary Hearing November 20, 2007)

 

 

 

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Visit Allegheny County sportsmen’ League at http://www.acslpa.org/

To learn how you can help stop these bills from becoming another set of “feel good” laws that you are burdened with obeying or that will send you to jail if you violate them.

 

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HB 18 - Ammunition, limitations on regulation, municipal powers (Amend 18 and 53 Pa.C.S)

 

 INTRODUCED BY D. EVANS, JAMES, MYERS, PARKER, BISHOP, COHEN, CRUZ, CURRY,

FRANKEL, GALLOWAY, JOSEPHS, KIRKLAND, LEACH, M. O'BRIEN, PASHINSKI & ROEBUCK

          

This legislation would invalidate Pennsylvania's current law that provides for uniform state law regulating firearms and ammunition by preventing localities from passing more stringent gun-control laws. If HB18 passes, municipalities will be able to enact a crazy patchwork of gun-control laws and regulations. The right of law-abiding Pennsylvanians to purchase firearms and ammunition will vary greatly depending on where they happen to live. Pennsylvania will end up with thousands of new gun-control laws and regulations affecting gun owners from one local jurisdiction to another, none of which will reduce crime.  This is a very counterproductive idea. It will provide a county, a city, a township or municipality with the authority to establish it’s own firearm laws without the requirement of being uniform throughout the state!

 

In effect your local municipality could regulate the following:

 

1) Sales of firearms, and additional waiting periods & background checks

2) Possession of firearms or ammunition

3) Gun club firing ranges and the discharging of firearms

4) Hunting

5) Storage of firearms and ammunition

6) It could limit you from possessing, carrying, or “manner of carrying” firearms   reasonably around zones surrounding schools, playgrounds, universities, colleges, bars or other places of general public accommodations.

7) It could limit your ownership, possession, transfer, and transportation of so-called assault weapons.  See HB 30 for assault weapon definition.

 

An individual’s constitutional right could be taken away by one simple majority vote on a referendum question!

 

 In short this will open the door for every form of gun control that any anti-gunner could ever think of.  Even worse, it could be enacted anywhere in the state. This would be a costly legal nightmare for gun owners in PA, to comply with the possibility of hundreds of local laws, not to mention that the laws can differ depending on which locale you reside in or travel through.

 

 

HB 22 – Handgun purchases and sales, limit; Violence Prevention Fund, establishing; municipal regulation of firearms and ammunition (Amend 18 Pa.C.S)

 

INTRODUCED BY MYERS, D. EVANS, GERBER, JAMES, WILLIAMS, BENNINGTON

           BISHOP, COHEN, CRUZ, CURRY, FRANKEL, GALLOWAY, JOSEPHS,

           KIRKLAND, LEACH, M. O'BRIEN, PASHINSKI AND ROEBUCK,

 

            This will mandate that no one could buy more than one handgun per month.  It will, of course, require a massive database of all gun owners’ personal information to make it operational.  This has been tried in other states with no reduction in crime.  Again, the taxpayers and gun owners would be burdened with paying for the upkeep of this database registration system.  This bill also creates a new anti-gun bureaucracy called the Violence Prevention Fund (another expensive program for us taxpayer to pay). This bill would also affect municipal regulation of firearms and ammunition.  

 

 

HB 29 – Registry for lost or stolen, failure to report, State Police duties (Amend 18 Pa.C.S.)

 

INTRODUCED BY WILLIAMS, D. EVANS, GERBER, CALTAGIRONE, JAMES, W. KELLER,

           MYERS, WHEATLEY, BISHOP, COHEN, CRUZ, CURRY, FRANKEL, GALLOWAY,

           JOSEPHS, KIRKLAND, LEACH, M. O'BRIEN, PASHINSKI AND ROEBUCK

This legislation would turn victims of crime into criminals by failing to report a missing or stolen firearm within 24 hours of discovering the firearm missing.  Failure to report lost or stolen firearms to the appropriate local law enforcement official within 24 hours is a summary offense punishable by a fine up to $500.  A person intentionally failing to report a loss or theft of a firearm commits a misdemeanor of the third degree. A court, in addition to any penalty prescribed by law, may prohibit you from acquiring a firearm for a period of six months.

Allows PA state police to” legally” create and maintain a database of stolen firearms. It prohibits any law enforcement agency to create, operate or maintain any registry of firearm ownership. However, nothing in this purposed bill forces the state police to destroy the illegal gun owner database that the state police have maintained for many decades. (A database created by diverting money away from crime fighting.)

 

 

 

Only YOU, by your very active involvement, stop this gun owner’s worse nightmare from becoming a reality.  Please Visit Allegheny County sportsmen’ League at http://www.acslpa.org/