In the Crosshairs

Efforts to deny Pennsylvanians’ gun rights gather steam

Forget deer season, in Pennsylvania it suddenly is open season on the second amendment.

The state legislature is awash in proposals to curtail the right of our commonwealth’s citizens to keep and bear arms. Governor Ed Rendell even attempted to wrap the reform cloak around more restrictive gun control laws by including the issue in a litany of otherwise germane reform measures he discussed at a recent Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon.

Driving the latest push to trample the constitutional rights of Pennsylvanians is an upsurge of crime in Philadelphia. It seems the murder rate in Philadelphia has surpassed that of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, in an all-too-familiar scenario in state politics, when Philadelphia has a problem the rest of the state pays with the loss of rights, more government regulation, higher taxes – or all three.

Some legislators are proposing to tax gun owners. Others want to make it more difficult to purchase weapons. And there are attempts to limit the number and/or type of firearms an individual can own. All of these proposals are excursions into the realm of the unconstitutional.

Both the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania make it plain that the right to keep and bear arms is one of those “unalienable Rights” Thomas Jefferson spoke of in writing the Declaration of Independence. So important is this right that after freedom of religion, speech, assemblage and petition of the government the Bill of Rights specifically says that the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Pennsylvania’s constitution (Article 1, Section 21) uses even more explicit language: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned.” Given that Governor Rendell and various pro-gun control legislators are questioning our gun rights, they have violated their oaths of office to abide by the constitution and therefore should be removed from office, except here in the people’s republic of Pennsylvania we lack recall rights.
Constitutional issues aside, efforts to deal with Philadelphia’s crime problem by enacting more gun control measures are an example of dealing with the symptoms of a problem rather than with the cause. Philadelphians also kill themselves with knives, cars, drugs and other means – not all of which can be outlawed.

The surge in crime in the “city of brotherly love” results not from guns, but rather from a culture of hopelessness. Other misguided big government initiatives have ruined the Philadelphia educational system, high taxes have driven businesses along with the jobs and opportunities they provide out of the city, one-party politics have so corrupted the political system city government cannot adequately resource or administer an effective police department, and the breakdown of the family structure has resulted in too many one parent or no parent families leaving far too many children without the nurture and discipline they need to grow into responsible adults.

In the absence of hope and opportunity, too many in the city have turned to a life of drugs, violence and crime.

These are difficult and intractable problems with which to deal. Therefore, the city’s political establishment, along with many of its representatives in state government, is looking to take the easy way out and put the blame on guns. They would like to pass a few more gun control laws then go back home and claim to have solved the problem.

Having governed themselves into the current mess, they along with their proposed “solutions” to Philadelphia’s problems simply lack credibility. This means the rest of us need to be on alert. Otherwise, we will lose one of the most important and valuable constitutional rights we have while one of our state’s great cities again fails to come to terms with the real problems it faces.

(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is: [email protected].)