The Morning Call reports “Pennsylvanians are seeking ‘common sense’ solutions for gun control. Unfortunately, both “gun safety” and “common sense” have been coopeted by the gun ban industry, and do not represent a realistic view of gun control. https://www.mcall.com/opinion/mc-opi-coronavirus-gun-violence-walsh-20200529-qxdq2bugljcxtnt2qmkmk6opfe-story.html
Over the last 56 years the Pennsylvania Legislature and various city councils have enacted more than 50 gun laws. None of them affected the criminal class who cause the trouble, and none of them has saved lives, cut the crime rates, or reduced or elimated violence in any segment of our society.
But pennsylvania has repealed or softened 21 restrictive gun laws, beginning in 1991. You can verify that in the FBI Uniforem Crime Re[ports which has been on line since 1993, or at this spreadsheet of the FBI Numbers. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/pacrime.htm
Each time the restrictions on law abiding citizens gun rights have been relaxed career criminals began to carry fewer guns, and violent crime rates declined. As you can see in the chart below, and verify at the link above.
It would be the most common variety of common sense to avoid reinstating the harsh laws that stopped the rise in crime, and led to lower crime rates. Even so simple a thing as adequate punishment for trafficking the stolen guns that arm the underworld would sharply reduce Pennsylvania’s violent crime rates.
Tragically, when the politicians talk about “common sense” they are talking about strengthening the measures that took the homicide and violent crime rates from their 1962 minimum to their 1992 peak.
That is not common sense, that is just dumb.
Those who feel the law abiding 97 percent of Pennsylvanians who will never deliberately break a law shouild have their gun confiscated should be handed their retirement papers in the next election, and those who can recognize both common sense and arrant ignorance put in their places.
Stranger