When crime guns are traced, the straw purchasers feign ignorance, claiming they just noticed the weapon was missing. If the legal buyer faced the threat of fines, the logic goes, she might think twice about arming friends who have criminal records.
Furious at lawmakers who killed the lost-and-stolen bill, city officials began taking small steps to protect their own. By 2009, nine cities - including Philadelphia, Lancaster, Reading, Pottsville, and Allentown - passed lost-and-stolen ordinances. To date, 30 brave towns have.
The legislature took notice and vowed revenge. Any day now, the House will vote on a bill granting the NRA the standing to sue towns that pass local gun laws.
So tax dollars are funding legislation seemingly written by, and for, an interest group with the sole goal of launching costly court cases?
Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray has never seen anything quite like it.
"Rather than devoting attention to property taxes or economic problems, the General Assembly is encouraging frivolous lawsuits to promote a political agenda," he said. "They're trying to bludgeon us."
Making cities pay
Pennsylvania gun laws are a sick joke. Any state that happily sells buyers unlimited weapons on demand is a state where politicians fear the wrath of the NRA more than the loss of their own lives.
Every attempt at commonsense legislation dies a bloody death. In 2010, outgoing Gov. Ed Rendell dubbed his eight-year quest to make the state safer "an abject failure, a lost cause."
Legislators want to have it both ways: They refuse to protect citizens, but they'll be damned if they allow cities to do it for them.
Butler County Republican Daryl Metcalfe calls his bill the "Private Firearm Ownership Protection Act," as if he's urging collectors to sign a state registry. If only.
