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
Never-ending debate: PA - Do concealed guns make us safer? :: 08/12/2015
Between 2005 and 2014, more than 123,000 handguns were purchased in Lancaster County. In the same period, nearly 60,000 concealed-carry permits were issued. Both figures mirror national trends.
RELATED: How Mass Shootings and Other Crimes Have Convinced More People to Carry a Gun
So is the county — and the country —safer as a result?
The answer is, nobody knows for sure. But everyone has an opinion.
According to LNP records, Lancaster County gun owners used their weapons to shoot assailants or would-be assailants on at least six occasions in the past decade. All six incidents were later deemed justifiable self-defense by law enforcement.
In four of the cases, the alleged assailants died after being shot.
In the most recent case, James Leonards, then 22, shot and killed half-brother Christopher Leonards during a physical altercation in Manor Township in February 2013. Police ruled James Leonards acted in self-defense.
Three of the fatal incidents involved store clerks who used a gun to thwart a robbery. In the other two cases, clerks fired at a robber but missed.
Saving lives?
“Americans with concealed handguns save lives every day,” argues John R. Lott Jr., president of the pro-gun Crime Prevention Research Center. In an op-ed published in The Philadelphia Inquirer last month, Lott argued that rising rates of concealed-gun carrying led to falling murder rates across the country.
Others disagree with that assertion, pointing out that any number of factors may be involved in the decline. Those factors range from an aging population to an improving economy, removal of lead from gas and paint (and the concurrent reduction in brain damage caused by lead exposure) and even legalized abortion.
A 2004 report by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences asserted that “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.”
Some gun control advocates even suggest carrying concealed weapons leads to more violence. The Violence Policy Center maintains a Concealed Carry Killers website, documenting the number of people killed in each state by "private citizens (who) use their concealed handguns to take lives, not to save them.”
The site lists two people killed in Pennsylvania by a person licensed to carry a concealed weapon, one of whom was a suicide.
Call for stricter laws
Nationally, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York has teamed up with his cousin, comedian Amy Schumer, to press for stricter gun laws. They acted after a gunman opened fire last month in a Lafayette, Louisiana, theater that was showing Amy Schumer's movie “Trainwreck,” killing two and wounding nine.
But, paradoxically, both that shooting and new legislative proposals could fuel even more gun buying and even more concealed-carry permits.
“With the unfortunate mass shootings over the past few years, the anti-gun side has talked about trying to implement more gun laws and regulations,” said Robert Preston, an administrator for the Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association website. That, in turn, “ramps up the pro-gun people's efforts, like getting carry licenses or buying more guns.”
“The general consensus ... probably for all pro-gun people, is that Pennsylvania is safer with more people carrying,” he said.
HB 230 - Side bar commentary:
Bill would make license to carry unnecessary
If some state legislators get their way, Pennsylvania residents won’t need a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for law-abiding citizens to carry a weapon for protection," said state Rep. Rick Saccone. The Allegheny County Republican introduced legislation to let people who are legally allowed to own a gun carry it without a concealed-carry permit anywhere guns may be carried.
Should the legislation pass, it would make Pennsylvania the eighth “constitutional carry” state, where concealed-gun permits aren’t needed. The other states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas Kansas, Maine, Vermont and Wyoming.
Co-sponsors of House Bill 230 include Lancaster County representatives, Bryan Cutler and Dave Hickernell, both Republicans.
“I don't like having a permission slip from the government to exercise a constitutional right,”
Cutler told LNP in March.
Saccone, in an interview last week, echoed that view: “In a society that is increasingly rebellious and chaotic, why do we need the government's approval for someone to put their coat over their gun?” he asked.
The bill is currently in the House Judiciary Committee.
