Gun apologists denied Small-town support

Jeff Hawkes
Lancaster Intelligencer Journal
July 23, 2009

You don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger, and you don't mess around with the NRA.

So goes the conventional wisdom.

But eight Pennsylvania cities -- Lancaster included -- are showing that the National Rifle Association might not be bulletproof after all.

The eight have ordinances requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen weapons.

Three times the NRA has gone to court to block the ordinances. Three times the NRA has lost, the latest setback coming Tuesday in Allegheny County Court.

A lost-or-stolen-gun measure is hardly heavy-handed gun control. It's an attempt to foil the sale of guns to felons, wife beaters and others not permitted to carry handguns. Is that not a good idea?

"We're after the guy who's buying the gun, selling it illegally and using theft as an excuse" after the gun is used in a crime, Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray said.

Philadelphia, a city where someone is shot every four hours, went first in enacting (in April 2008) a lost-or-stolen ordinance, and the NRA sued on grounds that only the state can regulate guns.

A Philadelphia Common Pleas judge didn't allow the suit to go forward, narrowly finding that the NRA lacked standing.

The NRA appealed, and an overconfident NRA spokesman cautioned others not to follow Philadelphia's lead, saying cities that enact lost-or-stolen-gun measures will be taken to court, "and they are going to lose."

Well, Allentown, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Pittsburgh, Pottsville, Reading and Wilkinsburg decided to stand up to the NRA anyway. So far it's working.

Commonwealth Court last month ruled that the Philadelphia judge correctly denied the NRA standing.

And Tuesday, Allegheny County Senior Judge R. Stanton Wettick, citing the appeal court's ruling, tossed out the NRA's suit against Pittsburgh.

"It's a win for mayors and city councils and citizens and police chiefs that think municipalities should have the right to take a reasonable step like reporting lost or stolen handguns to police," Joe Grace, of CeaseFire PA, said.

Yes, it is a win, but if you're sickened by gun violence and the NRA's over-the-top extremism in the defense of the gun industry and, I suppose, the Second Amendment, it's not time to relax.

If a straw purchaser is actually charged for not reporting a lost or stolen gun, he'll be able to argue that the state alone, not municipalities, has the power to regulate firearms.

That argument might just fly with some judges.

The only ironclad way for municipalities to secure the right to require reporting of lost or stolen guns is for the Legislature to pass a law granting them that power. Grace said that kind of reform legislation might be introduced in the fall.

A great way to build momentum is for more cities and towns to enact their own lost-or-stolen-gun ordinances.

That's certainly not out of the realm of possibility, considering that more than 100 Pennsylvania mayors are now members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, co-chaired by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Those mayors in Lancaster County, in addition to Gray, include the mayors of Akron, Christiana, Denver, Elizabethtown and Marietta.

While none of those boroughs is a shooting gallery, none is exempt from gun violence, either.

You don't have to live in Philadelphia to want to make it more difficult for thugs to get their hands on firearms.

And it's becoming evident that you don't have to live in fear of the NRA, either.

E-mail: jhawkes@lnpnews.com