Defends city's firearm regs
Intelligencer Journal
Lancaster New Era
Sep 22, 2009 08:50 EST
Lancaster

By BERNARD HARRIS, Staff Writer

Media Center
It happened again last week.

Ron Moser looked out of his Beaver Street home and saw a young man with a handgun in his hand. Moser called police.

"Yea, it's always about drugs," said Moser, a neighborhood watch block captain.

City Mayor Rick Gray on Monday chose Moser's neighborhood — which is within a few blocks of several city shootings that happened in recent years, including a domestic dispute that ended with gunfire this weekend — to talk about illegal guns.

Gray, a Democrat running for a second term, spoke of a push by the National Rifle Association to pressure mayors to quit the Mayors Against Illegal Guns group. He said he would not be bowed by the NRA, and he affirmed the group's efforts to curb illegal guns, while calling on his election opponent, former mayor Charlie Smithgall, to do the same.

"If you want to talk about crime in the city ... what hurts the city most is the possession and discharge of illegal guns," said Gray, who is nearing the end of his first four-year term.

Under Gray, Lancaster City Council members have passed ordinances increasing the penalty for discharge of a firearm in the city and requiring legal gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms.

Gray said firing a gun in the city terrorizes city residents and that the reporting requirement is aimed at curbing "strawman" purchases, in which a person legally buys a gun, then resells it to a convicted felon who cannot legally purchase a firearm. When the gun is used in a crime and traced to the legal buyer, the buyer often claims it was lost or stolen, Gray said.

Gray also has appeared in court to testify on behalf of Lancaster's residents in cases in which a person was caught in possession of an illegal gun.

He's one of about a hundred Pennsylvania mayors who belong to Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group of about 400 mayors who have pushed for tougher illegal gun laws. Akron Borough Mayor John McBeth recently quit the group, citing an NRA "smear campaign."

Gray called on Smithgall to pledge that if he were elected, he would enforce gun ordinances passed by City Council, join the Mayors Against Illegal Guns and to continue city efforts to get illegal guns off the streets.

"We're asking him to support the efforts we have made already," Gray said.

Smithgall said Monday that he would not join the organization, which he said was attempting to sue gun manufacturers and would prompt frivolous lawsuits.

A check on the organization's Internet Web site found that New York City has successfully sued gun dealers for failing to guard against straw purchases, but not manufacturers.

Smithgall said he would support city gun ordinances if police told him that they were effective, yet he criticized both measures.

The firearms discharge ordinance, which raised the penalty for doing so to 90 days in jail unless the gun was fired in self-defense, is difficult to enforce, Smithgall said, and discharging firearms was already a crime.

The lost or stolen gun reporting requirement penalized crime victims, Smithgall said. Lawful gun owners usually put firearms in a secure location and may not know for a long time they have been stolen.

"How can you report them as stolen when you don't even know they are gone?" Smithgall asked.

Gray said previously that if people are unaware that their guns are missing they are not in violation of the law. Yet if several guns used in crimes are traced to the same original buyer, that would help identify straw purchasers.

Smithgall said the straw purchase of guns is already illegal under federal law, and the city ordinance is just "piling on."

"They are just writing laws to feel good and feel like they have done something when actual enforcement is the only way to reduce instances" of illegal gun crime, Smithgall contended.

And, Smithgall charged, Gray has hobbled the city police by reducing the number of officers and micromanaging their efforts. He contended the city police force is down 17 officers.

Gray said last week that the police bureau is down by only two officers.

They are both right, according to Detective Chris Erb, president of the Lancaster City Police Officers Association, the city police union. There are two open positions due to retirements from the 160 officer positions in the current city budget, he said. But, that budgeted number is down 17 from the 177 officers budgeted when Smithgall left office four years ago.

Smithgall said he did more to fight crime during his eight years as mayor than Gray has done.

"The City of Lancaster used to be number two as the safest community in Pennsylvania and now we are number two in the worst cities in Pennsylvania, and the only difference is Mayor Gray and the suppression of police in taking active roles in the removal of illegal guns from people who illegally have them," Smithgall said.

He referred to the 2008 Pennsylvania State Police Crime report released in July. That report showed Lancaster having a per capita crime rate higher than Philadelphia.

Gray and city police Chief Keith Sadler speculated that the rate is higher because more crime is reported in Lancaster than elsewhere.

E-mail: bharris@lnpnews.com