When I was updating the Bloomberg Pennsylvania anti-gun mayors map to reflect the challenges to preemption, I was again amazed at the geographical breakdown of the cases.
View Bloomberg’s Anti-Gun Mayors in Pennsylvania in a larger map
Notice that these attacks are not coming from Philadelphia and its suburbs – the area most gun owners believe to be the hot bed for gun control in Pennsylvania. Of the 10 cities that have passed a lost-and-stolen ordinance in violation of state preemption laws, 4 of the 5 in Western PA are in Allegheny County. If West Mifflin enacts their proposal tonight, that will make 5 of 6 (out of 11 total cities).
But sticking to the 10 that have actually passed as of this afternoon, 6 of those are west of the Philadelphia metro area. In fact, 3 of the 4 I am willing to consider in the Philadelphia metro area are not at all considered suburbs of the city. They aren’t even in the same media market, but I opted to be extremely generous in defining Mayor Nutter’s reach with this one.
I’m sure that some will point to the fact that I haven’t mapped York and Scranton, but I have good reasons for those two exceptions. In the case of York, they didn’t actually pass an ordinance. They knew it would be illegal and just passed a resolution. In Scranton’s case, the matter has been tabled.
So for those of us in the Philadelphia area, we’re the ones who need to take cover from the gun control assault being launched by the rest of the state. Isn’t that interesting, if not a little unexpected?
What do the different colored pins and the exclamation points mean?
If you click on the map page, it has details for each. However, for those who don’t want to click through, the blue pins mean the same thing they have meant since my first post on the subject back in August. It is a town represented by a mayor who is party of Bloomberg’s group. The green pins are a change, but one that is noted. Green pins (formerly pink ones) indicate a mayor who resigned from the group. The red panic spots mean that it is town represented by a Bloomberg mayor that is currently challenging preemption. Again, it is noted for each mayor down the left side of the map page. If you want to explore it, the easiest way to do it is by going the main map page to move around and zoom with a little more control.