My Bang-Up New Year's Wish

As I drove up Academy Road in front of Archbishop Ryan High School in Northeast Philadelphia over the holidays, I saw road placards from PA Representative Dennis O'Brien wishing everyone Seasons Greetings.

How nice.

Representative O'Brien, if you really care about the happiness and good health of your constituents, read the information from this link (this excerpt in particular):

Community Demands Chairman O'Brien Stop Blocking One-Handgun-Per-Month

Report from PATH Coalition member Hal Rosenthal: On March 11, 2006 we administered the collection of 2,024 signatures to our petition demanding action on stalled state legislation which would aid in restricting the illegal wholesaling of handguns.

Constituents of State Representative Dennis O'Brien, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, who refuses to permit consideration of three bills which would limit handgun distribution eagerly signed the petitions. In a period of about two hours 38 petition carriers supported by 10 other volunteers gathered signatures to the petitions to be presented to Representative O'Brien.

The proposed bills deal only with handguns. It would limit their legal purchase to one every 30 days. The legislation would also require, as with automobiles, the owner of a hand gun to report it being lost or stolen. Eighty percent of murders and 90 percent of robberies are committed with hand guns. Hand guns are seldom used for hunting and rifles are seldom used to murder.

We are forming plans to ask constituents in other legislative districts to petition their state legislators to join in moving these bills to passage.

The acronym PATH stands for Pennsylvanians Against Trafficking Handguns, by the way.

Also, if any of Representative O'Brien's constituents are reading this post, please click here to access a secure site where you can personally tell him to hurry up and do something before more people die as a result of his inaction.

Update 1/3/07: So are you going to follow up or aren't you, Mr. Speaker?