The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Looks like HB 1845 is going to be up for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Commitee next week. This includes the provision allowing carrying of firearms into Pennsylvania State Parks, prevents confiscations in the event of a state of emergency, and allows for sheriffs to issue emergency LTCFs for people who’s lives are actively threatened.
Let’s get this onto the floor and up for a vote in the full senate, so that we can get this on Rendell’s desk.
The state senate has put the brakes on the smoking ban. Rendell’s Prescription for taking away the rights and freedoms away from citizens of Pennsylvania will have to wait.
Apparently a Pennsylvania lawmaker is looking to repeal state preemption of dog breed specific legislation because of one incident in his district. This is a lot like gun control, where the solution is to punish irresponsible owners, not to try to control the species of dog.
Color me skeptical about this one. A sawed off shotgun I can believe, since all it takes to get one of those is a regular shotgun and a hacksaw. But an RPG? We’ve seen this in the media before, and bloggers were able to identify it as an inert tube. It’s possible, I suppose, that someone had an RPG, but I’m guessing this is another case of some kind of munition looking thing that’s inert.
Bensalem is the next township over from me, but upon cleaning out my attic this weekend from previous owners crap, I didn’t find any fun toys like this. Bummer. But had I found an RPG, I would not have endangered any police or first responders. No, definitely not. I’m sure I could have found a cooperative junk yard owner, preferably in a secluded area, where such ordnance could be safely and properly disposed of, without endangering anything except perhaps a late model Chevrolet Celebrity. Or maybe a Ford Escort.
Armed and Safe links to an editorial on the incident and takes it to task. I would also point out this indication that the Times-Tribune couldn’t even be bothered to crack a dictionary:
The gun-toters don’t seem to understand that not brandishing their weapons in public would not diminish their right while also not intimidating other diners.
Let’s look at the definition of brandish, shall we? From Merriam-Webster:
- Main Entry: 1bran·dish
- Pronunciation: \ˈbran-dish\
- Function: transitive verb
- Etymology:
- Middle English braundisshen, from Anglo-French brandiss-, stem of brandir, from brant, braund sword, of Germanic origin; akin to Old English brand
- Date: 14th century
1 : to shake or wave (as a weapon) menacingly
2 : to exhibit in an ostentatious or aggressive manner
If someone views a firearm properly secured in a holster as “aggressive” or “menacing” that’s not my problem, it’s theirs. The laws of this commonwealth permit the open carrying of a firearm in plain view, or concealed or in a vehicle with a license. There are 600,000 people in this state with a License to Carry Firearms. People in Pennsylvania are around armed citizens all the time, and they just don’t realize it. All these gentlemen did was choose not to hide their firearms.
GunTruth has a pretty detailed piece up over at his blog about an open carry dinner in Pennsylvania that got raided by the Dickson City police. This kind of thing happened in Virginia too when VCDL started doing this. I don’t open carry much at all, but it is a legal practice in Pennsylvania, without a license in the rest of the state, and with a license in the City of Philadelphia. I have met the guy who was arrested in this, and while he is someone who will stand up for his rights and the law, he’s definitely not brash, abrasive, or rude.
It’s a fact of open carrying that sometimes people will freak out and call the cops, especially in the parts of Pennsylvania that are absorbing a lot of residents from New Jersey and New York, where the practice is illegal. I think 911 call centers and police departments need to be trained on the fact that the practice is legal, and how to deal with that kind of situation. VCDL has done a pretty good job of getting that done in Virginia, and I think we will in Pennsylvania too.
UPDATE: I should inform everyone that you’ll see a lot of talk of registration in this thread. Pennsylvania currently has a defacto registry, as the PA State Police has been computerizing records of sale and putting them into a big database. The legislature made creating a registry illegal in 1996, but the State Supreme Court ruled that because the database was not comprehensive, it was not a registry. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen cases where the registry is being treated as a registry of all firearms. We need to make getting rid of this “registry” our number one priority in Pennsylvania once we’re rid of Fast Eddie.
Joyce has made a $350,000 grant to CeaseFire Pennsylvania:
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation is granting the organization the money over two years to aid its bid to build a statewide, grass-roots response to gun violence, CeaseFirePA’s executive director Joe Grace said.
That’s big money aimed square at gun owners in Pennsylvania, and Joe Grace has demonstrated that he’s a capable and effective leader of CeaseFire PA. This isn’t going to stop, and we need to have our A game on.
Read this, and see what he thinks about guns:
The Northampton prosecutor said that the state attorney general does not need legislative approval to require Pennsylvania gun owners to report their missing weapons or to mandate gun merchants to inform their customers that they cannot permit their guns’ use by anyone not legally authorized to possess a firearm. He believes a Pennsylvania statute stating the “attorney general may adopt, after public hearing, such rules and regulations as may be necessary for the enforcement and administration of the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law (UTPCPL)” gives Mr. Corbett the necessary leeway to impose the aforesaid regulations.
This guy is going to be a disaster for gun rights, and it’s very important that he get nowhere near the Attorney Generals office in Harrisburg. Pennsylvania is becoming increasingly Democratic, and we don’t stop the tide, we’ll be New York and New Jersey before you know it, and I’ll be a Texan, Tennessean, or Arizonan.
From PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs:
The anti-gun folks are using the Philly police officer killing to push their agenda. Some are trying to say that if Philly had been able to enforce their gun laws, the killing wouldn’t have happened. While our sincere sympathy goes out to the officer’s family, we all know that banning the sale of firearms to law-abiding citizens would not have stopped this career criminal from illegally obtaining a weapon.
They attempted to file amendments to SB 1250, The Marriage Act. Here are some amendments that were filed. I am told SB 1250 has been tabled, but it shows you that these people aren’t going to give up. They aren’t going to stop. They have the media on their side 100%, and they are moving ahead at full steam.
The state has set up a web site to inform people about firearms transfer laws in Pennsylvania. Dave Markowitz takes the state to task for providing misleading information about what the law actually is. Handgun and NFA transfers have to be done through an FFL or the County Sheriff’s office. Long gun transfers between private parties are allowed, provided neither individual is prohibited from possessing a firearm. Seems the state is leading people to believe all transfers have to go through an FFL. From Dave:
Guntransfer.org clearly reflects the Philly-centric antigun bias. By fooling people into thinking that private party transfers of any gun are illegal in PA, they are looking to create a paper trail. All gun transfers which go through a licensed dealer first require the transferee to pass a background check conducted in Harrisburg by the Pennsylvania State Police. As you may be aware, a few years ago they were sued for creating an illegal registry of gun owners. As it turned out, the State Police won their case when the court ruled that the records which they were compiling did not meet the statutory definition of an illegal database. Nevertheless, it is still a de facto database of gun owners in Pennsylvania.
Our supreme court ruled that because the database wasn’t all inclusive, that it wasn’t a “registery,” which is prohibited by the Uniform Firearms Act. I doubt this is a nefarious conspiracy to create a paper trail, but it’s definitely not good that a state agency is spreading false information about state law. This is something we ought to bring up with Attorney General Corbett.