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 Preemption-PA-Firearm owners organization supports gun restriction lawsuits :: 11/24/2014
Solicitors have referred to possible lawsuits by the National Rifle Association when explaining efforts to draw up repeals of gun restrictions.
But as attorneys in West Mifflin, White Oak and elsewhere review gun controls that may exceed state law, their concerns will not be limited to the NRA.
Firearm Owners Against Crime president Kim Stolfer said his 110,000-member McMurray-based organization is behind Act 192, which come Jan. 5 will allow individuals and organizations to sue municipalities whose gun restrictions exceed state law.
“I was one of the architects of this legislation,” Stolfer said. “No one wants legal action because it is tremendously expensive and no one gets anything out of it.”
Stolfer is certain there are members of his organization who live, have business in or travel through West Mifflin — and in turn that could give them standing under Act 192.
“It provides for standing and for legal costs to be reimbursed,” Stolfer said.
“This law was meant to scare these cities and towns and that is what it is doing,” said Shira Goodman, executive director of CeaseFirePA, a Philadelphia-based organization supporting a Commonwealth Court challenge to Act 192.
The challenge was filed by the cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Lancaster as well as five state lawmakers.
“The goal was to file as quickly as possible,” Goodman said, adding there will be opportunities later for cities and towns to file amicus (friend of the court) briefs and “tell their story.”
Stolfer said West Mifflin has two questionable ordinances that go further than state law. One requires that residents who discover their firearms are lost or stolen must report that fact to police within 72 hours.
The other bans “possession or discharge of a firearm, weapon or explosive” in parks or recreational areas.
“That was the material issue in the City of Erie case,” Stolfer said, referring to the Commonwealth Court case in which a plaintiff successfully challenged a ban on bringing a firearm to an Erie park where he wanted to hold a rally.
West Mifflin Solicitor Phil DiLucente said he is reviewing that and “all ordinances that deal with firearms,” mulling over such issues as privacy, public safety and the Second Amendment.
“I'm not comfortable rendering an opinion yet,” DiLucente said.
Stolfer said he only knows of the two West Mifflin ordinances.
“If there is something else, it might be one of those off-book ordinances that haven't been published yet,” Stolfer said.
Stolfer attended the December 2009 West Mifflin council meeting where the reporting ordinance was passed, with the lone no vote coming from the late Councilman Richard D. Olasz Sr.
“He told them everything I'm telling you,” Stolfer said. “The solicitor (then Michael Adams) just brushed it off.”
Stolfer said council should have questioned why a lot of the gun laws already on the books are not enforced.
“I think it's a common-sense law,” William Welsh Jr. said at the 2009 meeting, his last as council president. “If you discover your gun missing, make a phone call to the police and let them know it's missing.”
There were speakers for and against the ordinance.
Among those who spoke in favor of passage was Mary Beth Hacke, a West Mifflin resident whose 14-month-old son, Ryan, was killed by a stray bullet while buckled into his car seat Jan. 11, 1997.
She is on the board of CeaseFirePA, which issued a list of municipalities that have laws requiring reporting of lost and stolen firearms.
Initially Whitaker was listed by CeaseFirePA as having such a law, but the borough said it does not.
“The borough does have a resolution ‘urging the Pennsylvania General Assembly to enact a lost or stolen handgun reporting law,'” borough secretary Jean Warren said. “Our solicitor (George Janocsko) was cautious about adopting an ordinance.”
The CeaseFirePA executive director issued two lists Friday. One is of municipalities with lost/stolen firearm reporting requirements, which locally includes Duquesne, Clairton, Glassport, Liberty, Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall.
Others with reporting requirements are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Wilkinsburg, Braddock, Castle Shannon, Aliquippa, Harrisburg, Reading, Allentown, Lancaster, Chester, Pottsville, Oxford, Norristown, Conshohocken, Wilson, Jenkintown, and Cheltenham, and Hatfield, Plymouth and Whitemarsh townships.
West Mifflin could wind up on a list of towns with resolutions urging a state law requiring such reporting. DiLucente said he hopes the General Assembly will pass a law that addresses public and private concerns.
Lincoln and McKeesport are on CeaseFirePA's list of towns with such resolutions.
Others urging state action are Heidelberg, Brentwood, Baldwin, Charleroi, Ambler, Easton, York, Swarthmore, West Conshohocken, Bridgeport, Catasauqua, Sharon Hill and West Chester, and Abington, Radnor and Upper Merion townships.
“It's a great public relations stunt,” Stolfer said of the resolutions. “It stigmatizes gun owners.”
He said it has nothing to do with prosecuting criminals because significant laws exist — if district attorneys are willing to enforce them.
Patrick Cloonan is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-664-9161, ext. 1967, or pcloonan@tribweb.com.
