Reasonable steps
The handgun limit is a reasonable step
Pennsylvanians closer to the center of the state seem more willing to try new ideas than their lawmakers in Harrisburg dare to believe.
Why? Because when it comes to a proposal as reasonable as a purchase limit of 13 handguns per person per year, many members of the General Assembly have their priorities and loyalties all wrong.
They would rather be on the leash of the absolutist gun rights lobby than lead Pennsylvanians to greater safety from gun violence. That’s as shameful as, well, as lawmakers who give themselves a pay raise in the middle of the night.
State representatives have a chance to get their priorities straight in a special session beginning today that is devoted to fighting crime and violence. They can use the nonbinding votes taken this week to signal support for House Bill 871, a statewide purchase limit of one handgun per person per month offered by State Rep. John Myers (D., Phila.). Myers understands the violence plaguing cities. His son, Shamari Taylor, 26, was abducted last month and is still missing. Taylor’s mother and sister were shot and wounded shortly after his kidnapping.
Myers’ bill exempts rifles and collectible antique guns. Add a provision allowing counties to opt out of even this mild limit, and you’ve got a compromise that most Pennsylvanians could live with. At least that’s the sense I got from people I spoke with at Cabela’s, a wilderness outfitter superstore in Hamburg.
In that case, I’d like to propose a bill that every newspaper can only write on editorial per month. After all, it’s a compromise we could all live with. It’s a reasonable step.
September 27th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Cabela’s had better whip together a press release against this.
I’m useless in the fight anymore, I read stuff like this and I see red. It’s too close to my heart.
September 27th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Geez, alot of the people at that Cabela’s in Hamburg are tourists from NYC or New Jersey. Of course they would think a handgun limit was reasonable.
A more reasonable alternative would be to cede Philadelphia to New Jersey. Then they could have the gun laws they want.
September 27th, 2006 at 11:55 am
I agree with Yosemite Sam here. Quite a lot of people at Cabelas in Pennsylvania are from New Jersey and the Philadelphia area. You can tell by the number of people there with two stickers on their windshield. The people in rural PA counties don’t have to get emissions inspections, so they only have one sticker. It’s not a good representative sample of the gun community.
I went to the Committee of the Whole thing yesterday. My account of it is here. It includes some pictures. Based on the votes at yesterday’s session, they aren’t getting their one gun a month law. Even some of the less extreme measures were going down to defeat.
September 27th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
This is pitiful.
The operative issue is not whether limiting people to 13 handguns per year is a “reasonable step”, but whether the enactment of such law violates the “shall not be infringed” clause of the 2A.
It seems to me that limiting the number of firearms a citizen can lawfully purchase in one year is an infringement (reasonable or otherwise) on the “right to keep and bear arms”.
Besides, what am I supposed to do with all that extra money?
September 27th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Did state representative John Myers think his son, his son’s mother, and his son’s sister were not helpless enough? They were unreasonably unhelpless, even two were known wounded by gunshot and one has yet to be accounted for.
Damn, that man really didn’t like them, did he? He wants a law that compromises them further. What a dolt!