Holding Our Safety At Gunpoint

Tom Ferrick, Jr. of the Inquirer has been all over the gun issue in this state lately, and I have to admit that I’ve been waiting a LONG TIME for someone in the local media to go after this as ferociously as he has lately.

As noted from this link (registration required as always…sigh), he used the shooting of a four-year-old little girl named Nashay Little in South Philadelphia as a springboard to find out what our elected representatives in the PA congress are doing – or, more precisely, NOT doing – about HB871 and SB1002, two bills in the House and Senate respectively, that would limit handgun sales in this state.

(By the way, I know I link to a lot of stuff in the Inquirer for which registration is required. I’m not doing that to get people POed. I’m doing it because I can’t find it any place else, and if you are reading this and have not registered with philly.com by now – it’s free – I would ask you to do that to read Ferrick’s article.)

Ferrick contacted each state politician in the Bucks/Chester/Montgomery/Delaware County and Philadelphia areas to find out where they stand on this, and this is what he found:

The results were surprising on a couple of levels.

One. There was more support than I thought. In the House, of the 62 members from the five-county area, 34 said they would vote "yes." Only eight said they would vote "no" - a list that includes two Philly legislators: O'Brien and House Speaker John Perzel.

In the region's 15 senators, eight were "yes" votes. One said he was undecided: Sen. Vincent Fumo, which surprised me because I thought he'd be a "no."

Two. A lot of legislators simply refused to say where they stood: 19 House members and six senators failed to reply.

As an aide to Sen. Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware) told me: "The senator does not complete surveys...."

Well, excuse me.

Most of those who failed to reply are from the 'burbs. Most of them are Republicans. Some of them simply may have missed my e-mails and calls, but allow me to speculate on why most refused to respond.

They are afraid.

They are aware that many of their constituents would support this legislation as a common-sense approach to curbing gun violence, but they don't want to anger the gun lobby or the pro-gun voters in their districts.

So they are silent.

So that means that it’s time for us to kick them in the ass.

I should also note that Ferrick’s column on Sunday included a list of how each state representative and senator voted, and I haven’t been able to find that online yet. That’s really a shame, because it’s really valuable to have. I may have to manually reproduce this list if I have to and update this post.

Update 6/21: Here's the list.

In my area, my state representative Dave Steil said he would support the bill to limit handgun sales. Dave Steil also refused the illegal pay raise last year. That makes Dave Steil a standup guy in my book.

However, my state senator, the lame-duck Joe Conti, did not respond. I will contact him shortly and ask him about this.

And by the way, the last I heard, four-year-old Nashay Little remained in critical condition.