Picking a Gun Fight

Governor Wolf may not have been expecting a fight over guns, but he sure as hell got one. There is a little known (outside of gun circles) provision in Pennsylvania law that when a state of emergency is declared, the only people who become eligible to possess firearms “on the public streets” are military, police, and people who have a License to Carry Firearms.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania has been hit particularly hard by opioid addiction. So naturally things will tend to follow the progression of politicians and pearl clutchers everywhere: this is a crisis of epic proportion, so Something Must Be Done. Declaring a State of Emergency over the opiods is Something, so therefore it Must Be Done.

There’s an effort growing to change the state of emergency law to remove the firearms ban. This would be a good idea. And since I believe the Governor did not intend to pick a fight on this issue, we might have a reasonable shot at getting him to sign it. It will also be interesting to see the gun control groups fight this, because of course having complex laws in place no one knows about means more people like you and me in prison, where no doubt many of them believe we belong.

7 thoughts on “Picking a Gun Fight”

  1. Not sure what this means:

    “and people to have a License to Carry Firearms”

    Some sort of typo or confused grammar?

  2. I question whether this “emergency” is even an appropriate use of the declaration statute.

  3. The governor’s press secretary was either uninformed or willfully ignorant of the laws surrounding a SoE when he was first asked about it. I would be willing to bet he’s a little better informed by now! Thanks to One of PA’s resident gun lawyers Joshua Prince for bringing the issue to the attention of more than just us gun nerds.

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