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Monday was just another day in Harrisburg. We considered 2 bills creating specialty license plates, 2 bills acknowledging and establishing state holidays and numerous bills tweaking bureaucratic regulations and responsibilities. Monday was also just another day in America as 19 children and 2 teachers were gunned down by an apparently disturbed 18 year-old boy who, days ago on his birthday, legally purchased 2 weapons including an assault rifle and pistol he used to shatter families and a closely knit community. I am not saying there is no merit to the kinds of issues that are apparently the only kinds of matters garnering bipartisan support in the legislature. I do believe there are much more important concerns we need to be addressing, a point so dramatically brought to mind by the massacre Monday in Uvalde, Texas. As I write this message to you today, there are at least 16 gun reform bills languishing in committee the Republican majority in the legislature refuses to allow us to even debate. Many of the reforms my Democratic colleagues and I support enjoy as much as a 90% approval from the general public. And, while we cajole our GOP colleagues to limit access to weapons of war and keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, the Harrisburg Republicans want to take us in the opposite direction. Republicans are currently pushing bills to allow no-permit carry of concealed weapons and legislation making it more difficult for municipalities to regulate guns in their communities. There seems to be a massive disconnect here. To give this discussion more context, researchers analyzing data collected by the Center for Disease Control reported that in 2020 firearms shootings became the number one killer of children and teenagers in America. Gun deaths of children had the dubious distinction of displacing automobile accidents as the leading killer of children, a statistic that held for 60 years. Over time, we reduced the mortality rates of children killed in automobile accidents with a few common sense reforms. Requiring and improving car seats, prohibiting children from sitting in front seats and generally making cars safer served to reduce the number of child car crash fatalities. Can it be so difficult to pass a few reasonable measures to make our children safer from gun violence? Why are Republicans in Harrisburg more interested in protecting gun owners than they are in protecting children and families? And just who are they trying to protect? A Harvard/Northeastern study found 3% of Americans own 50% of guns in the United States. A 2020 Gallup survey found that only 32% of Americans claim to own a gun. The Republicans in Harrisburg are once again imposing their minority points of view on the vast majority of Pennsylvanians. We can choose to be in a perpetual state of grief or we can choose to take action. We could pass:
If we cannot get a handful of our Republican colleagues to join us in these common sense gun reforms, we need you and other like-minded, reasonable people in the Commonwealth to vote in the next election and kick out recalcitrant, pro-gun legislators and elect a new majority that will put kids and families over gun manufactures and their lobbyists. Thanks for reading, Kristine |