Thursday, January 21, 2010
By DAN SOKIL

HATFIELD - Hatfield Township is a trendsetter in Montgomery County. It's now the first township in Pennsylvania with an ordinance on the books requiring township gun owners to report a lost or stolen firearm to the police.

That must be done within 72 hours of noticing it went missing.

"An illegal gun in a criminal's hands is just as deadly in the suburbs as it is in the inner city," said Commissioner Tom Landauer, who led the push for the ordinance.

"We need to be proactive and take every step we can to make it harder for dangerous criminals to get illegal guns," said Landauer.

Passed by a unanimous 5-0 vote, the ordinance requires "any person who is the owner of a firearm that is lost or stolen (to) report the loss of theft of the firearm to the Hatfield Township Police Department within 72 hours after discovery of the loss or theft of the firearm."

A firearm is defined by the ordinance as "any pistol or revolver with a barrel length less than 15 inches, any shotgun with a barrel length less than 18 inches or any rifle with a barrel length less than 16 inches, or any pistol, revolver, rifle or shotgun with an overall length of less than 26 inches."

According to a township statement, a recent survey of National Rifle Association members commissioned by the national Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition showed that 78 percent of NRA members were in favor of mandatory lost or stolen handgun reporting as a tool to keep illegal weapons out of the hands of criminals.

"We're not interested in hunters and collectors or any other legal gun user, and most gun owners understand that. This is about illegal guns in the hands of criminals," said commissioners President Scott Brown.

"We'd never take an action against legal gun ownership. We are working against illegal guns only; this is a law enforcement issue," he said.

Nineteen communities in Pennsylvania — including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Reading — have passed similar ordinances in the past year.