PA Bill Number: HB2235
Title: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ...
Description: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ... ...
Last Action: Referred to LABOR AND INDUSTRY
Last Action Date: Apr 25, 2024
PA Newspaper: Ban Shotguns - Restrictions overdue on lethal arms :: 06/12/2017
Social isolation and alienation. A dark obsession with violence fueled by the internet. Multiple firearms. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the 24-year-old Luzerne County man who gunned down three co-workers and then took his own life last week at a supermarket near Tunkhannock.
Crime tape marks off an area outside the Weis market in Wyoming County where a Luzerne County man murdered three people before committing suicide last week. (Jake Danna Stevens/ The Times-Tribune)
But the broad outlines match too many American stories of aimless young men who turn to senseless violence, in this case with two pistol-grip shotguns.
The human propensities for alienation and violence have seemingly been with us from Cain and Abel and there is probably nothing we can do to eliminate them entirely. The internet has grown into a remarkable but unwieldy beast whose darkest corners are possibly beyond our reach.
But when it comes to firearms there are a lot of things we could do to blunt their impact if our political leaders only had the will and courage to stand up to a determined and well-funded gun industry and lobby.
That sentiment will undoubtedly be labeled as predictable and naive by those who feel any restriction on firearms is an assault on freedom.
But in the wake of the killing of three innocent people merely trying to feed their families by working the night shift at a supermarket, it is pertinent to ask why anyone would need or be allowed to buy two pistol-grip shotguns — weapons designed solely to fulfill fantasies inspired by violent video games and Hollywood blockbusters — or why any company should be allowed to manufacture and sell them.
Other western nations have managed to restrict ownership of such lethal weapons without sacrificing the freedom or prosperity of their people. That doesn’t mean they have no crime or mass shootings, but they have nowhere near the gun murder rate of the United States, which is 25 times higher than that of 22 other high-income, democratic countries, according to the American Journal of Medicine.
That is not a subject for debate. It is just fact.
And it is disheartening that not even tragedies like the Thursday morning shooting in Wyoming County will motivate our so-called leaders to do anything meaningful about it.
http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/restrictions-overdue-on-lethal-arms-1.2204964
