I received the following from the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs:
The House debated the “Reporting Lost & Stolen” amendment till 11:00 last night. It was mostly a speech by Rep. Parker (Phila.) about why this was needed and how it was not an infringement on our rights to buy a firearm. A few other representatives spoke against it, then Rep. Cutler asked to have the amendment withdrawn saying it was unconstitutional based on court rulings that said a convicted felon could not be charged for not reporting, because he would be incriminating himself.
Before Rep. Cutler finished, and any votes could be taken, discussion was cut off because of their rule to end session by 11:00pm.
They were to pick up where they left off at 11:00am this morning. (7 more amendments were filed on the bill last night.) However, when they got to the floor at 11:00, the Democrats were short by about 8 legislators, as they were all in Philly for the Obama rally this morning. When the Republicans made a motion to bring a bill up for vote, the Democrats had to quickly recess for some emergency. They kept everyone waiting around all day to give the 8 missing members a chance to return. When that didn’t happen, they eventually recessed for the day.
They do not return for session until March 31st.
Rumor was that they didn’t have the votes to pass their amendments, so they were going to try to table any further votes on amendments so we couldn’t get any of our amendments voted on either. We’ll have to wait till they return to see what develops.
Thanks to the NRA and John Hohenwarter for working with us on these issues! And thanks to everyone who took the time to contact their legislators on these issues.
It’s good news they don’t think they have enough to get the amendment passed, but it sucks we have to wait until March 31st.
Err, the story sounds like that Lost & Stolen Bill, not Castle.
FYI: the Lost & Stolen bill in MD just died. To paraphrase Frankie: “If it CAN’T make it here . . .”
I had a phone call from a spokesperson for my State Senator today (Scarnelli) about this bill ant the Lost & Stolen amendment. It was his contention that this will not get on the Senate docket this session. I mentioned that I had heard it was being fast tracked and he told me that was not the case. Even so he seemed pretty sure the bill would not pass if it contained this amendment whenever it reaches the Senate..