Face-off is today on Pa. gun bills

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Face-off is today on Pa. gun bills
Both sides sought votes. Rendell will appear before a House panel.
By Amy Worden and Thomas Fitzgerald

Inquirer Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG - Interest groups on both sides of the gun-control debate launched a cross-state blitz to pressure lawmakers in advance of a legislative committee vote scheduled today on three firearms bills.
In a stream of e-mails and recorded phone calls that went out across the state during the weekend, pro- and anti-gun-control organizations urged voters to contact members of the House Judiciary Committee to try to sway them on the issue.

Also seeking to sway fence-sitters, Gov. Rendell, in a risky move, today is expected to become the first sitting governor to appear before a legislative committee in at least 20 years.

In the Capitol yesterday, the gun-control battle had lobbyists from the National Rifle Association working the halls, and sparked a flurry of activity in front of and behind the cameras.

A majority of Republicans on the 29-member committee gathered for an impromptu news conference announcing their intention to try to defeat the bills, while CeaseFirePA fired back with the results of a new poll showing a majority of voters in targeted members' districts favored stricter handgun control.

"The only way you win this fight is to do it like a political campaign," said Philip Goldsmith, president of CeaseFirePA. ". . . My perspective is that the NRA is no longer the only game in town."

NRA lobbyist John Hohenwarter said he was confident that the will of the gun group's quarter-million Pennsylvania members would prevail in the committee vote.

"We are confident that you will see rational minds prevail," said Hohenwarter, who postponed a bear-hunting trip to make the rounds yesterday to secure votes. "I think you will see the proposals voted down."

Democratic support for the gun-control bills is not a given. Five Democratic committee members - most from rural districts - voted against one of the measures last summer.

With violent crime on the rise in Philadelphia and elsewhere, Rendell took the unusual step last week of persuading the judiciary panel's chairman, Rep. Thomas Caltagirone (D., Berks), to hold a first-ever committee vote on a one-handgun-a-month bill and permission for him to make the case for tighter handgun restrictions directly to members.

Driven in part by the spate of police shootings in Philadelphia, Rendell last week implored lawmakers to pass handgun controls to take guns out of the hands of criminals.

Among the three most controversial bills - all sponsored by Philadelphia lawmakers - is one that would limit handgun purchases to one a month. Gun-control advocates say that would help curb "straw" purchases. Pro-gun forces say such a restriction has proven ineffective in states where it has been tried.

Another measure would allow municipalities to enact their own gun-control laws, and the third would require gun owners to report lost and stolen weapons.

The committee also will consider a bill sponsored by House Speaker Dennis O'Brien (R., Phila.) that would set a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence for shooting a police officer.

Signaling a more hard-nosed approach for gun-control advocates, CeaseFirePA reached 35,000 frequent voters in six swing districts with robo-calls on Sunday, urging them to phone their lawmakers in support of the measures. "We have to stop handgun violence aimed at our police in Pennsylvania," the recorded voice of a police officer says.

The calls went to the districts of the five committee members who voted against the lost-or-stolen reporting bill, as well as Caltagirone, who voted in favor of the bill on June 27. The NRA also reached out to its members with recorded phone calls.

At their news conference yesterday, 11 of 13 House Republican committee members said they would vote against the three gun-control bills before the committee and lambasted Rendell for proposing cuts to violence-prevention programs. Not there were Reps. Kate Harper (R., Montgomery) and Tina Pickett (R., Bradford).

Rep. Ron Marsico (R., Dauphin), the ranking Republican on the committee, called Rendell's scheduled appearance before the committee a "dog and pony show."

"This charade only exposes a bigger problem that the governor is ignoring," he said, asserting that existing laws were not being enforced.

Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said in an e-mail that House Republicans would rather "attack the governor than attack the problem."

"They appear to be perfectly happy with allowing the gun industry to profit handsomely by arming both law-abiding citizens and the criminals among us," Ardo said.

According to the CeaseFirePA poll released yesterday - which surveyed voters in the districts of five House members who have opposed gun-control measures in the past, plus that of Caltagirone - voters favored tougher regulation of handguns.

Support was highest, at 96 percent, for the bill that would require people to immediately report to police lost or stolen handguns, and create a state database to track such guns. Seventy percent across the six districts said they supported the proposal to limit handgun purchases to one per month.

Support for the reporting measure ranged from 100 percent in Harper's 127th District to 93 percent in the Erie County Fifth District of Republican Rep. John Evans.

The 100 percent reading startled pollster Ben Tulchin of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. "I've never seen this in a poll before," he said.

"These are not urban, strongly Democratic districts," Tulchin said. "They are swing districts."

"Once again the people are way ahead of the politicians," said York Mayor John S. Brenner, a Democrat.

Hohenwarter dismissed the poll and its findings as partisan.

"You can take any topic and put together questions and come up with the desired outcome," he said, asserting that the NRA rarely conducted polls. "We base our positions on our membership. We don't do public-opinion polling."

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Gun-Control Bills
One gun a month

would make it unlawful to buy or sell more than one handgun in any 30-day period. It would exempt dealers, collectors, police, and security companies.

Local gun control would

allow all municipalities to regulate firearms sales. Voters would first have to pass a ballot question accepting local regulation.

Lost or stolen firearms

would require state police to keep track. A victim of theft would have to report it to police within 24 hours. Information would be forwarded to the state.

Murder of police officer

law would require life in prison for those convicted of first- or second-degree murder.

Follow the battle over gun control with the latest news from Harrisburg today at philly.com.

Contact staff writer Amy Worden at 717-783-2584 or aworden@phillynews.com.
 
Have the governor recalled, perhaps? Clearly someone who thinks that anti gun legislation is the way to control criminals is incompetent to grasp any other task within the duties of an elected office.
 
Watched the gov on TV give his fist banging speech.

One gun and anti pre emption went down the toilet (19 to 10 and 17 to 12). Stolen guns was tabled in the face of defeat by the bills sponsor. The only pro Republican changed his position verbally just prior to the vote, prompting the tabling. Looks like pressure from pro gunners worked. :D

The mandatory 20 yr sentence for shooting at LEO's passed and will go to the full house for a vote.

Democrats were split on the three anti gun bills.
 
Good win! :D Now still yank or at least censure the governor for trying that junk. There needs to be some message sent not only as "no", but that there are consequences for trying.
 
Excerpt here for the record:

House committee supports one, but rejects two other key gun control bills.

By Mario F. Cattabiani

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
HARRISBURG - Despite an impassioned personal plea by Gov. Rendell to do more, a state House panel this morning endorsed one bill aimed at curbing gun violence but rejected two others and tabled action on a fourth.

In a 27-2 vote, Judiciary Committee members approved a bill sponsored by Speaker Dennis O'Brien (R., Phila.) to create a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 20 year for anyone who fires a weapon at a police officer.

Also by wide margins, the committee rejected bills that would limit the number of handguns a person can buy to one a month and allow cities to enact their own gun laws. Members tabled action on a bill, which would require gun owners to report lost and stolen weapons.

The votes came moments after Rendell urged committee members to grow a "backbone" and send the entire package to the full House for a vote.

"Those who argue that violence is a Philadelphia problem caused by judges, police and prosecutors who do not enforce the laws on the books are dead wrong," Rendell told the committee.

"It's time for us to stand up and say enough," the governor added, pounding his first on the table.

Rendell said he took the unusual step of personally appearing before a legislative panel because of a rising homicide rate in Philadelphia, where six police officers were shot in as many weeks, one fatally.

At one point during his testimony, Rendell's voice cracked with emotion when he recalled as Philadelphia's mayor meeting with what he called "newly minted" widows of slain police officers.

"First, I'm asking you today to begin by protecting our police in Philadelphia and every hamlet, town and borough in this Commonwealth," Rendell said. ". . .If we don't act now, today, we will have more illegal handguns, more shootings and more police widows."

As the Democratic governor spoke, it was standing room only in the House Majority Caucus Room where the committee met. About a dozen uniformed police officers from Philadelphia, Allentown, Reading, and Lancaster sat in the front row facing lawmakers.

Gun-control supporters wore stickers: "Strong gun laws protect our cops."

Efforts to enact tighter controls on guns have routinely died in Pennsylvania, a state with more than 1 million hunters.

At the outset of his 40-minutes before the panel, Rendell stressed that he was not attempting to attack law-abiding gun owners.

"I don't come here to demonize anybody. I believe we have a strong and proud gun heritage in Pennsylvania. I believe hunting is a way of life for so many of our citizens," Rendell said. "If we seek to demonize anybody here...it is to demonize criminals who use our police for target practice, it's to demonize criminals who sell guns to felons and juveniles."

The measure to impose a mandatory two-decade term for anyone who knowingly fires a weapon at an officer now goes to the full House for a vote.

Rep. Kathy Manderino (D., Phila.), a judiciary committee member who typically sides against such sentencing guidelines, said she was willing to allow the entire House decide the fate of the bill, which also would require Senate approval.

Yet, she chastised the legislature for not acting sooner on a similar measure.

"We are always happy to do something after somebody is dead," she said, referring to Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy, who was killed late last month.
Click to expand...
 
He pulled the "I support hunting" card. Does he honestly think we're stupid enough to see this is a hunting vs. non hunting issue? I wonder if any governor has ever had the spine to say they support CCW holders. I dare him to.
 
He (Rendell), like most PA Politicos of both parties, continue to play the "I support Hunters" card whilst demonizing the NRA.

PA has 250,000 NRA members. It is either the #1 or #2 state in membership in the NRA. Yet if you follow the debate in the local and Philly press you would think the NRA is evil incarnate, that no one supports the NRA. They just do not have a clue. Even the Republicans.

Most of the Philly media is full of "NRA Redneck morons who marry their sisters" comments. (Note that they mention ONLY the NRA, not GOA, JPFO, SAF, SAS, PARPA or even Pink Pistols!)

Rendell and his entourage don't get it, most of the Dems don't get it and the media has no clue.

It is not the NRA, or the deer hunters, it is the decent citizens of the state.
 
Re the proposed 20 year sentence for shoting at a police officer, the following might interest some.

For quite a few years now, there has been inennsylvania statutes a MANDATORRY ADDITIONAL PENALTY (5 YEARS) UPON CONVICTION OF USING FIREARMS IN A CRIMINAL ACT.

So far as I've heard and read, the additional 5 year penalty, the MANDATORY PENALTY, is the first thing dropped in the course of plea bargaining, while the courts often seem to ignore the specified MANDATORY PENALTY.

With this new proposal, there would be a 20 year penalty MANDATED for some particular unlawful act. Looking at past performances, if enacted, will this new mandatory be enforced, or will it simply tutrn out to be more verbage in the statute books or another section in th Pennsylvania Code, where so much languishes. BTW, the foregoing question does not even begin to address the following question, Should shooting at a police officer bring any additional penalty? After all, nobody is compelled to undertake police work as their occupation and then is the life of a police officer any more valuable than the life of a school teacher, a bus driver, a draftsman or any other individual citizen? Something to think anbout perhaps.

As for the role played in all this by Governor Rendell, the gentleman is a consumate double-talker and always has been, or put in other terms, Is the governor lying, are his lips moving?.
 
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