House bill 760...The Firearms Registration Act

[Ghost001]

Outstanding!!! I am watching the local news here but haven't seen anything yet on it. Keep up the fire!!!

[Mtbkski]

It is 10:30 at night. A commercial for my local news just said, "Gun owners are flooding the goverment with e-mails and phone calls concerning the new tax they are thinking about putting on firearms. Story tonight at 11. WJAC Channel Six News.

Word is getting around isn't it. Way to go everyone. Keep it up.

[NineseveN]

I just fired off the following bundles of joy to my elected betters:



H.B. 291
I am sincerely having a terribly difficult time wrapping my mind around this bill as anything other than a de-facto stab at banning every single firearm currently owned by Pennsylvanians. A requirement that stipulates that any “handgun shall be personalized so that it can only be fired when operated by that handgun's authorized user or users” is complete and utter nonsense.

First of all, no such firearm currently exists in workable form. If this bill were to pass, it would give a window of 4 years in order for gun manufacturers to research, develop, test and tool up for the manufacture of these fantasy weapons. I know of no current arms manufacturer that has the capability to design and produce complex and durable electronics and then integrate them into firearms designs when a proof of concept does not yet even exist. Even if the manufacturers were able to accomplish this through throwing a lot of time and money at the problem, or even outsourcing some or all aspects of the electronic portion of the firearm, the amount of capital required to do so in such a short time period would be astronomical. Not only would the cost of these electronic parts increase the cost to produce these firearms, but the immense amount of R&D that would go into such a project would cause the cost of firearms to be sold in this Commonwealth to skyrocket, making them out of reach for many of our state’s gun owners, especially given the financial mess that the powers that be have managed to get us into already.

Another small, yet fundamental principle that this bill seems to miss is that firearms manufacturing is a business, and like all businesses, they are bound by the nature of the market. Any business takes into account the demand of a certain product and its price point to determine if production is viable. Due to the fact of the enormous production costs associated with making such a space gun for one state, in addition to the obvious decline in demand that expensive electronic guns would suffer due to the price point being out of range for many gun owners, the manufacturers would be faced with the decision to either lose money on making a product that isn’t even sure to work in order to sell in a market where demand would likely be low, or simply avoid selling in that market and concentrating on sales to states where the citizens are not being dominated by garbage laws proposed and passed by bureaucrats that are obviously out of touch with reality.

And lastly, all of this ignores the fact that electronic devices fail. No matter how well they are designed and maintained, electronic devices suffer a higher failure rate than properly designed and maintained mechanical devices. Where electronic devices gain in efficiency, they lose in reliability to their mechanical counterparts. Just this past week I was grocery shopping and it was pouring down rain, When I ran to my car to load my groceries and go home, the alarm fob for my car would not work; it suffered an inexplicable electronic failure of some sort. The result was that I ended up getting soaking wet while running around like an idiot in the rain trying to get the blasted thing to work. Eventually, I opened the lock manually and disengaged the alarm by inserting the key into the ignition.

Imagine for one moment, that the fob in my story was one of these HB 291 Space Guns, and that at the moment of failure, I was trying to defend myself against a violent assault or rape. Will the lawmakers of this state be held liable for the gruesome acts that would be committed against me due to the malfunction of a device that serves no other practical purpose than to strip law-abiding citizens of their Article 21 and Second Amendment rights as well as the human right of self defense because we serfs and peons apparently cannot be trusted with the exercise of said rights? I didn’t think so. But apparently the bill exempts the law enforcement officers and guards that protect the lives of the lawmakers and their ilk; that’s wonderful, they’ll be protected and we’ll be stuck in dark parking lots cowering in fear and listening to the sound of a click instead of the sound of a bang while our bodies and rights are violated...waiting the requisite 2 to 10 minutes for the police to show up and collect the evidence. Anyone who supports and votes for this bill or any like it should be shamed out of office.


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H.B. 30
Pennsylvania’s resurrection of the Federal “Assault Weapons Ban” of 1994 which defined “Assault Weapons” as any rifle that has certain superficial features that did not impact function or differentiate them in any way from rifles that looked less-scary. According to the National Institute of Justice, in a report on the effects of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, stated:

“..analyses using a variety of national and local data sources found no clear ban effects on certain types of murders that were thought to be more closely associated with the rapid-fire features of assault weapons and other semiautomatics equipped with large capacity magazines. The ban did not produce declines in the average number of victims per incident of gun murder or gun murder victims with multiple wounds.”

"A number of factors—including the fact that the banned weapons and magazines were rarely used to commit murders in this country...posed challenges in discerning the effects of the ban."

"...the banned guns are used in only a small fraction of gun crimes; even before the ban, most of them rarely turned up in law enforcement agencies’ requests to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to trace the sales histories of guns recovered in criminal investigations."

"There were several reasons to expect, at best, a modest ban effect on criminal gun injuries and deaths. First, studies before the ban generally found that between less than 1 and 8 percent of gun crimes involved assault weapons, depending on the specific definition and data source used."

"Given the limited use of the banned guns and magazines in gun crimes, even the maximum theoretically achievable preventive effect of the ban on outcomes such as the gun murder rate is almost certainly too small to detect statistically..."

"The public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated."

The 1994 ban did little to nothing to combat crime or hinder criminal enterprises; it merely served to hinder the rights of law-abiding citizens. Consider the fact that the absolute standard for a criminal is one who disobeys or acts contrary to the law, they don’t follow the law, that’s what makes them criminals; passing more laws won’t combat crime, finding and punishing the criminals will. A measure such as H.B. 30 only serves to strip law-abiding citizens of this state of their Article 21 and Second Amendment rights.

If you have the time, please see this ABC special by John Stossel on the topic of Gun Control myths. I encourage you to also forward it on to your fellow lawmakers in an attempt to educate them about the matters on which they vote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR9RN_iSKtg




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H.B. 760 and H.B. 277
This is a fairly straightforward bill; it requires the registration of all firearms in the commonwealth on an annual basis at a minimum cost of $10 per firearm. For the hunter, sportsman or person that simply wishes to own the proper tools to protect their lives, this could be a very expensive proposition. According the Pennsylvania State Police’s latest Annual Firearms Report, 386,382 firearms (handguns and rifles) were sold in Pennsylvania in 2005. At $10 per firearm, HB 760 would have cost Pennsylvania gun owners nearly 4 million dollars in 2005. The average number of firearms purchased in Pennsylvania between 1999 and 2005 is 376,499. That is simply an unfair burden on law-abiding citizens who choose to exercise their rights under Pennsylvania’s Constitution, Article 1, Section 21;” "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.”

Furthermore, a registry is illegal under both Pennsylvania State Law and Federal Law:

Pennsylvania Unified Firearms Act
§6111.4. Registration of Firearms.

Notwithstanding any section of this chapter to the contrary, nothing in this chapter shall be construed to allow any government or law enforcement agency or any agent thereof to create, maintain or operate any registry of firearm ownership within this Commonwealth. For the purposes of this section only, the term “firearm” shall include any weapon that is designed to or may readily be converted to expel any projectile by the action of an explosive or the frame or receiver of any such weapon.


Federal Law 18 U.S.C. 926 (2) (a)) being: No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or disposition be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary's authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.

To the lawmakers I say, I have my lawyer on retainer; Molon Labe, I’ll see you in court.


P.S. On H.B. 277, no state that has enacted such a scheme has seen any benefit and it has come as a wasteful burden to the taxpayers, something that this Commonwealth cannot bear.

[jwg]

I watched that report on channel 11 tonight and they had one of the legislators on. He said this is nothing more than an attack on the private lives of people and he will not support it. Logan from Monroeville also said he will not support it when I emailed hi. He actually replied back, which he does each time.

[Emptymag]

NineseveN,

Not to trivialize your letter, but what you said regarding HB 291 makes perfect sense to us and to those who want the firearms banned, the arguments are not really arguments. They WANT the firearms to be priced out of reach. They WANT the manufactures to "go under". They don't CARE if your high tech gun goes "click" when it gets wet because in their minds, YOU have no authority to be shooting ANYONE!

As for the other letters, I like them very much. 'specially this...

To the lawmakers I say, I have my lawyer on retainer; Molon Labe, I’ll see you in court.

Just thought I'd share my thoughts.

[NineseveN]

Originally Posted by Emptymag

NineseveN,

Not to trivialize your letter, but what you said regarding HB 291 makes perfect sense to us and to those who want the firearms banned, the arguments are not really arguments. They WANT the firearms to be priced out of reach. They WANT the manufactures to "go under". They don't CARE if your high tech gun goes "click" when it gets wet because in their minds, YOU have no authority to be shooting ANYONE!

Agreed, I kept it in there for dramatic effect. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

[D'Klaw]

If you copy this message and paste it in any "Word" program it is easy to change the location and appearence of the message. I have a lot of the message centered and the font bold in places. It makes for a fair hand-out. Been printing them and giving out to people.
Give it a shot if you can, everything we can do to stop this will help!

Help Stop Gun Confiscation

Big City Politicians have introduced a bill (HB 760) “Gun Registration Act of 2007”.

If passed it will require EVERY Gun in Pennsylvania to be registered annually at a cost of

$10.00 Per Gun!

If for ANY reason your application is rejected, Your Guns will be CONFISCATED!


Write (or better e-mail) your House District Representative to stop this “Do nothing to prevent crime” Bill.

It will take away our freedom

To contact your House District Representative:
· Log on to a computer internet server
· In the address box type: http://www.legis.state.pa.us Hit Enter.
· In the upper right hand corner – a box reads “Find Members By”
Type in your zip code and with a left click of your mouse in the GO circle Hit Enter.
· Left click with your mouse on the name(s) of your House District Representative (it should be in blue).
· Locate the contact information and send an e-mail to:
STOP BILL HR 760

[Calvin]

Here is on of the letters I sent.

Dear Mr. Miller:

I wanted to write to you to inform you of my position on House Bill 760 that is currently in the Judiciary Committee. It is my position that this bill will put an overbearing burden on legitmate law abiding gun owners. It is a piece of legislation that will not make our state safer by its enactment. Criminals I can assure will not come to the State Police barracks to register their firearms. It serves only to tag known legal gun owners. In addition, there are several aspects of this bill that give me serious cause for alarm.

First: If a gun owner is denied gun registration. This gun owner must surrender their firearms to the State Police. They are not allowed to sell them through legal channels. This is basically taking of personal property by the state.

Second: A gun owner who has been denied only has 10 days in which to file an appeal.

Third: This bill requires that a law abiding citizen who is trying to comply with State Law be fingerprinted.

Fourth: This law requires that a gun owner yearly go through the process of a background check and annual registration for each firearm. While, I am sure this would be a great windfall for the State I am also sure there are better ways to raise funds.

Fifth: This law puts an undue burden on the rights of U.S. Citizens to own, collect, and participate in sports with firearms.

Sixth: This law will put a huge burden on the Pennsylvania State Trooper's to carry out this law as it is written. Where exactly will the funding come for the additional time and energy that will be spent on fingerprinting, background checks, and annual registration of every firearm owned by every law abiding Pennsylvania resident.

While, I understand that this bill may have a long shot to get passed I want to pass along how I see this bill and my opinion on the effects this bill will have.

[Emptymag]

Originally Posted by D'Klaw

If you copy this message and paste it in any "Word" program it is easy to change the location and appearence of the message. I have a lot of the message centered and the font bold in places. It makes for a fair hand-out. Been printing them and giving out to people.
Give it a shot if you can, everything we can do to stop this will help!

Help Stop Gun Confiscation

Big City Politicians have introduced a bill (HB 760) “Gun Registration Act of 2007”.

If passed it will require EVERY Gun in Pennsylvania to be registered annually at a cost of

$10.00 Per Gun!

If for ANY reason your application is rejected, Your Guns will be CONFISCATED!


Write (or better e-mail) your House District Representative to stop this “Do nothing to prevent crime” Bill.

It will take away our freedom

To contact your House District Representative:
· Log on to a computer internet server
· In the address box type: http://www.legis.state.pa.us Hit Enter.
· In the upper right hand corner – a box reads “Find Members By”
Type in your zip code and with a left click of your mouse in the GO circle Hit Enter.
· Left click with your mouse on the name(s) of your House District Representative (it should be in blue).
· Locate the contact information and send an e-mail to:
STOP BILL HR 760

D'Klaw,

WELCOME and thanks for the info!
I made your directions a bit harder to miss.
Hope you don't mind.

[NineseveN]

Or, you could just go to http://www.pafoa.org/politician-sear...gislators.html