Mayors Against Illegal Guns

The "Fix Gun Checks" truck tour paid a visit to Philadelphia yesterday with a giant billboard that adds another death to its counter every 40 minutes to symbolize the 34 people killed nationwide each day by guns. The tour was launched in New York Wednesday by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan coalition of more than 550 mayors, including Mayor Nutter and 184 other Pennsylvania mayors. Nutter and other supporters gathered with the mobile billboard outside City Hall yesterday morning.

INSTEAD of the Keystone State, you could call Pennsylvania the "Keep Your Head Down State. " And Delaware? "Definitely Not First. " A national report released Sunday knocked Pennsylvania and Delaware as two of just 10 states that failed to report any mental-health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). New Jersey didn't do much better: In a state with 8.7 million people, just eight mental-health records were submitted through August last year. Compare that with California, which bested everyone by reporting 256,106 during the same period, according to the study.

The gunfight is over, and the cities lost. The question is: Do they realize it yet? For decades now, large majorities of urbanites - the people, the politicians, the interest groups - have favored stricter controls on guns, for reasons city residents find self-evident. In the last five years in Philadelphia, 1,656 people have been slain, and of those, more than 1,300 died of gunshot wounds. For many city residents, myself included, guns represent a plague, not protection. From the perspective of bloody Philadelphia, gun-rights advocates - and their allies in Harrisburg and Washington - appear all too willing to tolerate death in the city so they can protect the sanctity of the Second Amendment in the country.

Mayor Nutter has called for mayors in 600 U.S. cities and towns to gather 25,000 petition signatures opposing proposed federal gun legislation. In a letter Thursday to members of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Nutter said the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 would "eviscerate the ability of individual states to decide who can carry a hidden, loaded gun. " Nutter's letter said the legislation "would force every state to honor...

More than a year after it became a hot campaign issue in the race for Pennsylvania governor, it's even more critical that Harrisburg lawmakers close the so-called Florida loophole that lets Philadelphia gun owners skirt the city's strict handgun-carrying rules. With a renewed push in Congress to nationalize concealed-weapon permits so that any state-issued handgun permit would be valid across the country, the public-safety stakes could loom even larger. As many as 900 city residents - more per capita than in any other among the nation's 10 largest cities - are now packing heat in Philadelphia by virtue of mail-order permits issued by Florida.

The threat of gun violence to Philadelphia-area residents from the so-called Florida loophole could go national - unless U.S. senators such as Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey, and many others, do the right thing. Under a bill just rammed through the U.S. House to a tune called by the National Rifle Association, every state that permits residents to carry concealed handguns would have to honor permits held by gun owners from other states. That would scrap the long-established notion that states should have the right to shape their own approach as to who gets to carry a legal weapon.

Win or lose, the constitutional challenges to local gun laws in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and other Pennsylvania communities appear to be helping build grassroots pressure on Harrisburg lawmakers to follow New Jersey's lead and enact tougher statewide gun-control measures. Even as the latest court ruling dealt a blow to Philadelphia's 2008 gun laws, Lancaster became the eighth town to enact its own requirement that owners must report lost or stolen weapons. In addition to Philadelphia, officials in Pittsburgh, Allentown, Reading, Easton, Pottsville, and Wilkinsburg have adopted such ordinances in hopes of forcing the hand of lawmakers who toe the National Rifle Association line.

Dozens of faith-based activists who had no more authority than the moral force of their cause deserve much of the credit for shutting down one of Philadelphia's worst sources of handguns used in crimes. Given the carnage on city streets from illegal weapons, the apparent success of the daily protests by Heeding God's Call sure beats singing a few verses of "We Shall Overcome. " Not that protests should be needed to prompt federal enforcement of firearms laws. Nor should newspaper expos?s, such as the 2006 Inquirer articles about the suburbs' former mecca for crime guns, Lou's Loans of Upper Darby.

Gun legislation was supposed to go on the back burner this year, with the economy on life support, the health-care system overloaded, and most folks more worried about swine flu than assault weapons. But who could ignore the series of mass shootings that killed police in Oakland and Pittsburgh, nursing-home residents in North Carolina, and immigrants in Binghamton? Especially since the victims were buried around the 10-year anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School, two years after the tearful tragedy at Virginia Tech.

We were among a group of five protesters - an Episcopal rector, a rabbi, a Brethren minister and two women of faith - who recently entered Colosimo's Gun Center on Spring Garden Street. We asked the owner, James Colosimo, to sign a code of conduct intended to help stem the flow of handguns to the illegal market by reducing the so-called "straw buying" that feeds it. Colosimo refused; we were arrested and spent the next 12 hours in jail. Two days later, a group of seven other protesters sat outside Colosimo's, in front of the door and at the feet of the police, and again pressed the owner to sign the code.

The gunfight is over, and the cities lost. The question is: Do they realize it yet? For decades now, large majorities of urbanites - the people, the politicians, the interest groups - have favored stricter controls on guns, for reasons city residents find self-evident. In the last five years in Philadelphia, 1,656 people have been slain, and of those, more than 1,300 died of gunshot wounds. For many city residents, myself included, guns represent a plague, not protection. From the perspective of bloody Philadelphia, gun-rights advocates - and their allies in Harrisburg and Washington - appear all too willing to tolerate death in the city so they can protect the sanctity of the Second Amendment in the country.

The threat of gun violence to Philadelphia-area residents from the so-called Florida loophole could go national - unless U.S. senators such as Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey, and many others, do the right thing. Under a bill just rammed through the U.S. House to a tune called by the National Rifle Association, every state that permits residents to carry concealed handguns would have to honor permits held by gun owners from other states. That would scrap the long-established notion that states should have the right to shape their own approach as to who gets to carry a legal weapon.

Mayor Nutter has called for mayors in 600 U.S. cities and towns to gather 25,000 petition signatures opposing proposed federal gun legislation. In a letter Thursday to members of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Nutter said the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 would "eviscerate the ability of individual states to decide who can carry a hidden, loaded gun. " Nutter's letter said the legislation "would force every state to honor...

More than a year after it became a hot campaign issue in the race for Pennsylvania governor, it's even more critical that Harrisburg lawmakers close the so-called Florida loophole that lets Philadelphia gun owners skirt the city's strict handgun-carrying rules. With a renewed push in Congress to nationalize concealed-weapon permits so that any state-issued handgun permit would be valid across the country, the public-safety stakes could loom even larger. As many as 900 city residents - more per capita than in any other among the nation's 10 largest cities - are now packing heat in Philadelphia by virtue of mail-order permits issued by Florida.

The "Fix Gun Checks" truck tour paid a visit to Philadelphia yesterday with a giant billboard that adds another death to its counter every 40 minutes to symbolize the 34 people killed nationwide each day by guns. The tour was launched in New York Wednesday by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan coalition of more than 550 mayors, including Mayor Nutter and 184 other Pennsylvania mayors. Nutter and other supporters gathered with the mobile billboard outside City Hall yesterday morning.

Mayor Nutter, joined by 34 Philadelphians touched by gun violence over the last few decades, stood outside City Hall on Friday to welcome the Fix Gun Checks Truck Tour, a national campaign that urges changes in gun laws. Nutter is one of 550 mayors in Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition founded in 2006 dedicated to gun-law enforcement and closing loopholes. After Philadelphia, the Fix Gun Checks Truck Tour will stop in Pittsburgh. In Philadelphia, Nutter said, it is easier for children "to get a gun than to go buy a book.

INSTEAD of the Keystone State, you could call Pennsylvania the "Keep Your Head Down State. " And Delaware? "Definitely Not First. " A national report released Sunday knocked Pennsylvania and Delaware as two of just 10 states that failed to report any mental-health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). New Jersey didn't do much better: In a state with 8.7 million people, just eight mental-health records were submitted through August last year. Compare that with California, which bested everyone by reporting 256,106 during the same period, according to the study.

States with lax firearm laws are more likely to sell guns that are later exported to other states and then used in crimes, a national coalition of mayors charged in a new report. The top 10 states account for 49 percent of the guns used in out-of-state crimes, according to a report released yesterday by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of almost 600 U.S. mayors. Mississippi and West Virginia, for example, are among the states that do not enable prosecution of gun buyers who falsify purchaser information or of gun dealers who fail to conduct a background check on a buyer.

Gun control tends to be the third rail of politics in Pennsylvania, rarely if ever touched by candidates who hope to prevail on Election Day. So it's good to see the state's top anti-gun-violence group take the rather audacious step of trying to get all of the major gubernatorial candidates to go on record in favor of tighter, commonsense gun laws. Even more unusual is that a number of the contenders to replace Gov. Rendell are actually speaking up in favor of gun-safety measures.

Dozens of faith-based activists who had no more authority than the moral force of their cause deserve much of the credit for shutting down one of Philadelphia's worst sources of handguns used in crimes. Given the carnage on city streets from illegal weapons, the apparent success of the daily protests by Heeding God's Call sure beats singing a few verses of "We Shall Overcome. " Not that protests should be needed to prompt federal enforcement of firearms laws. Nor should newspaper expos?s, such as the 2006 Inquirer articles about the suburbs' former mecca for crime guns, Lou's Loans of Upper Darby.