One of SayUncle’s reader corrects us about Switzerland and says we ought to close the “gun show loophole” which is Bradyspeak for banning private sales of firearms.
Pennsylvania has banned the private transfers of handguns. In order to transfer a handgun to someone who isn’t an immediate family member, you have to either go through a licensed dealer, or the County Sheriff, both of whom will conduct background checks.
Philadelphia’s murder rate is skyrocketing. They are currently on track to exceed 400 murders this year. As best as I can tell, banning private sales of handguns has had exactly no impact on the availability of guns for criminals. Now the city is calling for the state to implement another anti-gun canard, one-gun-a-month, because the ban on private sales of handguns isn’t working to reduce crime or even reduce straw purchasing.
Why is the solution, if it’s not working, it must mean you’re not doing enough of it?
Snowflake,
Its kind of hard to blame this restriction on this particular law, when according to the NRA, its been around for almost 70 years…
Gov. Ridge signed “The Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act of 1995” (also known as Act 17), which simply specified that after the state`s instant check system became operational, all persons purchasing any firearm from a licensed dealer would be subject to an instant records check wherever the purchase was made. The requirements for transferring handguns between individuals in Pennsylvania were set in 1934, and Act 17 made no changes in the requirements for transferring handguns at gun shows.
Even if you do assume that this provision was added in 1995, the 10 years following this ban saw far fewer murders than the 10 years prior to the requirements (see: Penn Murder Rates).
I don’t know exactly why the murder rate in Phili has gone up recently, but I think its a dramatic leap to say that closing the gun show loophole was the cause.
I didn’t claim that was the cause. I claimed that the law is useless for the purposes of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. The UFA also instituted a number of other things, including state wide preemption, and forcing the City of Philadelphia to issue concealed weapons licenses.
The main reason Philadelphia murder rate is skyrocketing is because it has a boob for a mayor, an even bigger boob as police commissioner. The city is not willing to get tough on criminals, so the revolving door keeps turning, and violent people keep getting put back on the streets.
As long as they can blame Harrisburg for their failures, I don’t expect it to change.