Here it Comes

Castle Doctrine is getting a vote in the Judiciary Committee on May 25th. The bad news is that so are three anti-gun bills. From NRA:

  • House Bill 1043 would create a new Bureau of Illegal Firearms Trafficking or a “Firearm Trafficking Czar” in the Office of the Pennsylvania Attorney General.  Passage of this bill has the potential of establishing yet another anti-gun biased bureaucratic agency within the state government.
  • House Bill 1044 would gut Pennsylvania’s firearm preemption statute which currently allows only the State Legislature to enact laws pertaining to firearms. Without a state preemption law, the result would be a complex patchwork of restrictions that change from one local jurisdiction to the next.
  • House Bill 1045 would bring California-style gun-control to the Keystone State and ultimately ban many semi-automatic firearms commonly owned by Pennsylvanians.

Contact information for the committee is here. We can’t count on these bills to be defeated. Remember, New Jersey was a pro-gun state until the day it wasn’t. So it will be the same for us if we do nothing.

11 thoughts on “Here it Comes”

  1. What kind of nonsense is Bill 1045? Unless I’m reading it wrong, it would just ban possession, sale, transfer, yadda, yadda, yadda of the SKS rifle only? If I was an anti-gunner, I could think of 10 rifles off the top of my head that are “scarier” than an SKS. It kind of makes me wonder (even more than I already do) about the mental faculties of these guys…

  2. Is there a way to fax a letter to all members of the Judicial comity at once, through PFO or NRA-ILA ?
    I looked on both sites but couldn’t find any link.

    Thanks.
    .

    1. PAFOA doesn’t have a system like that, and I’m not aware of ILA having one either. Very few folks use faxes for activism anymore. Mail a letter, write an email, make a phone call, send a tweet, or leave a Facebook note.

  3. 1045 is just bizarre. It bans only “a semiautomatic rifle known as an SKS with detachable magazine”. Normal SKS rifles don’t even have detachable magazines. I mean, I get that the Chinese (detachable) variants aren’t rare, and that it’s common to add a detachable magazine “conversion”, but it seems bizarre, even by gun control standards, to go after only some variants of one rifle.

  4. With as many sponsors as HB40 has at this point due to constituent interest, it can’t be ignored by Caltagirone any longer. So what does he do? He trots out 3 bills, all written/sponsored by the same 5 Democrats, and gives them the same consideration that we’ve been asking HB40 to get for years. He’s hoping to scare us into withdrawing HB40 for fear of one of the anti-gun bills reaching the floor, and also hoping to scare the committee members into having to support at least one of the anti-gun bills along with HB40, lest they be pegged as “extremist”.

    HB1043-1045 are just political theater, and do nothing more than existing law to address crimes committed with firearms. Make sure to contact the House Judiciary Committee to tell them so!

    PAFOA doesn’t have a distribution system, but for those interested, see this PAFOA post for phone numbers and email addresses for all the members of the Judiciary:

    http://forum.pafoa.org/pennsylvania-10/54399-castle-doctrine-hb-40-09-does-anyone-really-want-passed-if-so-please-read-page-66.html#post1213036

    Also, for those who wish to contact the House Judiciary members, me and a few other PAFOA members have written some letters which we are encouraging anyone interested to re-use and send along to voice your support of HB40 and rejection of the remaining bills. Also feel free to modify or add to these letters with your own sentiment, so that your opinions aren’t dismissed as a form letter. See below for the letters, and make sure to have your opinions heard!

    http://forum.pafoa.org/pennsylvania-10/54399-castle-doctrine-hb-40-09-does-anyone-really-want-passed-if-so-please-read-page-67.html#post1213566

    http://forum.pafoa.org/pennsylvania-10/54399-castle-doctrine-hb-40-09-does-anyone-really-want-passed-if-so-please-read-page-67.html#post1213701

    http://forum.pafoa.org/pennsylvania-10/54399-castle-doctrine-hb-40-09-does-anyone-really-want-passed-if-so-please-read-page-67.html#post1213274

  5. Just contact the “NBC 10 Investigators” about HB-1044. They ran a story the other night about how having a patchwork of laws governing using a hand-held cell phone wile driving has created a nightmare for everyone, since it’s hard to know where it’s legal and where it isn’t. I’m sure Harry “The Hare” Hairston will be happy to run a piece against this abomination.

    Good luck PA, we know exactly how you feel with this crap.

    -John
    New Jersey

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