PA Bill Number: SB1198
Title: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and ...
Description: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and .. ...
Last Action: Referred to AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS
Last Action Date: May 17, 2024
Big game ban ordered on semiautomatics :: 04/03/2017
In January, two months after state legislators agreed to allow the Game Commission to regulate hunting with semiautomatic rifles, the board reversed its traditionally slow-and-steady policy by signaling it would fast-track general hunting uses of a class of sporting arms new to the state.
PG graphic: Semiautomatic Survey
But a funny thing happened on the way to the vote. Sometime between then and last week’s quarterly meeting commissioners slowed the pace of their own change, voting to permit the use of semiautomatic rifles for everything but big game.
Pennsylvania is the last state to allow some hunting use of the sporting arms, which require one pull of the trigger for each shot.
When the board took heat from some hunters for its preliminary vote, Game Commission staff conducted a random sample mail and web survey of 4,000 hunting license holders gauging their views on semiautomatic hunting. More than 50 percent responded. Sixty-four percent of those said they opposed or strongly opposed to the use of semiautomatic rifles for big-game hunting. And of those who were opposed, 52 percent said they were “strongly opposed.”
Dave Levdansky of Forward, who attended the Harrisburg meeting to voice opposition to the hunting use of semiautomatics, said board members seemed startled by the survey’s results.
Should magazine size restrictions be placed on semiautomatic rifles used for small game?
“Boy, you could tell they didn’t like it,” said the former state representative and lifelong hunter. “After a slide presentation [detailing the survey’s results], commissioners asked questions. One said maybe the age of the respondents skewed the results.”
That may be so. The survey went out to only adult and senior resident and nonresident hunters. Junior, mentored and military license holders were not included. The average age of participating hunters was 53.5 years.
“One point really stood out to me,” said Levdansky. “46.5 percent of hunters who currently own semiautomatic rifles opposed using them for deer, bear and elk. I think that surprised commissioners more than anything.”
“We listened to our hunters,” commission president Brian Hoover said, in a statement.
Game Commission spokesman Travis Lau said he was surprised that 36.9 percent of hunters who responded to the survey owned semiautomatics.
“Semi owners came in higher on support of use of the guns for hunting than respondents in general,” he said. “But even semi owners didn’t show clear support for [using them for] big game -- 40 percent in support, 45.6 percent strongly opposed. More than half, 53.2 percent of hunters who now own semiautomatic rifles, were opposed or strongly opposed to their use for hunting big game.“
Following the meeting, commissioners issued a statement saying that if support for big game hunting with semiautomatic rifles were to grow they would consider further regulatory changes.
For now, semiautomatic rifles in .22 caliber or smaller propelling a single projectile will be legal for small game in the 2017-18 license year, which begins July 1. There is no caliber restriction for their use in hunting groundhogs or furbearers, nor any magazine size restrictions for any lawful hunting use of semiautomatic rifles. The regulatory changes do not impact the use of semiautomatic shotguns or the use of other lawful sporting arms for big game hunting. Hunting with semiautomatic handguns is illegal.
