Gun Laws

Along with goats, dogs and rusty chain saws, a roadside flea market in Johnson County offers a dishpan full of snub-nosed Saturday night specials or a brand-new AK-47 assault rifle. Right now, Kentucky gun buyers and sellers don't worry about the Brady gun- control bill. There's no waiting. No embarrassing questions. Nothing to sign. No identification required. No serial numbers to write down. No taxes, either. Check out the rows and rows of guns for sale in the backs of pickup trucks - at least 150, by a visitor's count.

By Sheila Y. Oliver From Colorado to Connecticut, far too many lives have been cut short by senseless gun violence. These are the mass tragedies that grab headlines. But, every day, even more innocent Americans fall victim to bullets. In 2011 alone, 269 New Jerseyans were killed by gun violence. This week, the General Assembly will vote on a comprehensive package of roughly two dozen bills aimed at curbing this epidemic. These measures are a blend of temperance and temerity - the temperance necessary to address this issue pragmatically without trampling on Second Amendment rights, and the temerity to tackle this issue once and for all. For those who argue that our efforts are an emotional response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I don't entirely disagree.

PERHAPS NOW, after the murder of police officer Gary Skerski, the state legislature will make a move to allow Philadelphia to draft its own gun laws. Where are their priorities? Doesn't human life mean anything to them? They were quick to pull the trigger on their pay raises. Last year, 380 Philadelphians were murdered. At the current pace, we will surpass that appalling amount by year's end. Come on, Gov. Rendell, a Philadelphian, get their butts moving. The elections are coming in November.

AS MOURNERS gathered yesterday to pay their last respects to Officer Chuck Cassidy, and to offer thanks to him and his family for making the ultimate sacrifice for the city, we can't help wondering if there will be another opportunity to thank Cassidy . . . when much-needed gun laws are passed. Cassidy's death has galvanized the city in ways that hundreds of other homicides haven't been able to. Let's hope it galvanizes lawmakers in Harrisburg to stop their cowardly lack of action on sane and common-sense gun laws.

Alan S. Krug in an Op-ed Page article Dec. 23 states: "The anti-gun forces have no valid scientific data to support their contention that proposed restrictions on rifles, shotguns and handguns would reduce crime rates. " If Mr. Krug would take the trouble to consult statistics he would find that whereas each year in the United States more than 10,000 people are killed by handguns, in other civilized countries such as Britain, West Germany and Japan fewer than 100 are killed each year by handguns.

ACCORDING to the Daily News, mall killer Robert Hawkins' step-parent/guardian Debora Maruca-Kovac told Omaha papers that the night before the slaughter, Hawkins and her sons showed her the semi-automatic used in the attack. You'd think a woman who knows this kid spent time in a mental institution for threatening to kill people, would have reported this to police. Common sense, not gun laws, would've stopped this disaster. Instead, she's being paid to be on talk shows, instead of going to jail for not reporting a crime.

Today the U.S. House of Representatives should heed the public, not the gun lobby, as it votes on the most significant gun-control measures to come before it in years. Since April, Congress has been scrambling to respond to the public outrage over the massacre in a Colorado high school. Last month, the Senate, under intense pressure from voters, did an about-face and approved a modest package of controls, including mandatory background checks at gun shows. Under the Senate bill, every sale at any gun show would require a criminal background check of the buyer by the FBI. That's common sense.

RE SIGNE'S recent cartoon on guns: Does she realize that every single gun crime in Philadelphia is a serious federal offense? Federal firearm law is found in the U.S. Code, Title 18, Chapter 44. These laws cover every aspect of straw-man sales, illegal purchases, illegal transfers, illegal possession, etc. Why isn't existing law being enforced? Examples: 1. Sec. 922 (a)(6): False answers on Treasury Form 4473 when buying a handgun from a federally licensed dealer, or making false oral statements, is a 10-year felony offense.

THE ARTICLE "They're taking aim at gun laws" (Jan. 8) sadly repeated the same misinformation gun-control advocates trot out every time they want to pass new laws to restrict legitimate gun ownership. Using your own clean record to purchase a gun for someone who is not allowed to own a gun is called a straw purchase. Gun-control groups would have us believe that this is legal in Pennsylvania. It is not. Under federal law, it is illegal "for any person in connection with the acquisition or attempted acquisition of any firearm knowingly to furnish misrepresented identification . . . " [18 U.S.C.

OLYMPIA, Wash. - After struggling to sway both state and federal lawmakers, proponents of expanding background checks for gun sales are now exploring whether they will have more success by taking the issue directly to voters. While advocates generally prefer that new gun laws be passed through the legislative process, especially at the national level, they are also concerned about how much sway the National Rifle Association has with lawmakers. Washington Rep. Jamie Pedersen, a Democrat who had sponsored unsuccessful legislation on background checks at the state level, said a winning ballot initiative would make a statement with broad implications.

NOW THAT THE legislation for further background checks for gun control has failed, where are we going? I think this proposal was just a smokescreen to make people think that something was actually going to happen. Expanded background checks are not the answer to controlling gun violence. What we really need are controls on semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. We should also have automatic jail sentences for those caught with an unregistered gun. If you want a licensed handgun in your home, that's certainly your right, and I have no objection.

Sad. Disgusting. "Sick. " Local supporters of a Senate bill that would have expanded background checks for gun buyers had strong words Thursday for those who voted down the proposal. "What you saw on the part of the U.S. Senate was pathetic," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said. "It just goes to show you how much very small special-interest groups can influence decisions in Washington. I was totally disgusted by this. " But people on the other side felt just as strongly, and both camps vowed to keep battling.

WASHINGTON - After two weeks in the national spotlight, Sen. Pat Toomey was ready to move on. Toomey, seeming refreshed Thursday after the deflating defeat of his background-check plan the day before, greeted reporters with a smile as he rode an escalator up from the Capitol's subway platform. But the Pennsylvania Republican did not want to talk much about the fight that had put him at the center of the political and cultural maelstrom on gun laws. "The Senate has spoken on this," Toomey said.

LATELY, Mark Kelly has been looking into politicians' eyes, into their souls, and he's seen only one thing - fear. The lawmakers, whom Kelly didn't identify, were afraid of how gun lobbyists would have reacted if the pols had backed a bill from Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to expand background checks on gun buyers. The bill was rejected Wednesday by the U.S. Senate. "I hope average people will remember how the vote went down today," Kelly, the retired astronaut and husband of former Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, told an audience at "Finding Common Ground: Moving Forward," a gun-violence forum hosted by the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice.

WE DIDN'T need Monday's bombings in Boston to understand a basic truth: Cities are places with their own particular dangers. The people who live in - and love - cities get this. But many who live elsewhere think of cities as problem-ridden hellholes, and anyone who lives in one gets what he or she deserves. That dichotomy helps explain why Pennsylvania has such a schizophrenic approach to guns - with laws based on ancient small-town mythologies, not 21st-century realities. In recent years, the country has fostered two gun nations: the nation of chest-thumping faux patriots who refuse to acknowledge that guns can be used for evil, and who think the more guns the better, and the nation of those trying to survive urban streets ruled by illegal guns.

  IN THE 19 YEARS since the Brady Background Checks were instituted - despite Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora, the Sikh temple and now Newtown - not one law has been passed at the federal level to reduce gun violence. In fact, just the opposite has occurred. Unfortunately, there is now the growing and looming reality that this sorry trend will continue. Since Newtown, some states, such as New York, Colorado and Connecticut, have tightened gun laws, but many more have loosened them, such as Arkansas, Montana and Mississippi.

HARRISBURG - As two U.S. senators were trumpeting a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks on gun sales, a state lawmaker unveiled his own proposal for broader background reviews in Pennsylvania. State Rep. Steve Santarsiero (D., Bucks) said his bill would expand background checks in the state to include purchases of long guns, including assault rifles, conducted in private sales. Santarsiero said it was time to close the state loophole that allows the transfer of long guns among private sellers without a background check.

CHARLOTTE AND Harriet Childress falsely claim that "nearly all of the mass shootings in this country in recent years . . . have been committed by white men and boys. " ("Mass murders a white-male, not mental-health, issue," April 2). In reality, mass killings have also been committed by nonwhites, such as Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, Beltway sniper John Muhammad, Long Island Rail Road shooter Colin Ferguson, and Wisconsin's Chai Soua Vang. The Childresses speculate that "if African-American men and boys were committing mass shootings month after month, year after year . . . we'd have political debates demanding that African Americans be held accountable.

HARTFORD, Conn. - Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed into law sweeping new restrictions on weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines Thursday in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, a bipartisan deal that gun-control proponents hope will spark action in Washington and state legislatures across the country. Just four months ago, the governor broke the news to horrified parents that their children had been slaughtered in the Newtown school. On Thursday, four of those parents joined him as he signed the bill into law during a somber ceremony at the state Capitol, his act giving Connecticut some of the toughest gun-control laws in the country.