Second Amendment supporters by the hundreds flooded the rotunda
of the Pennsylvania State Capitol building in Harrisburg
yesterday. The packed, standing-room-only crowd, driving in from
across the state in the middle of a torrential rain, listened to
state lawmakers and gun owners denounce Governor Edward G.
Rendell's call for a ban on assault weapons.
Rendell, who is term-limited and cannot seek re-election,
recently called for a ban on assault rifles and a limit of
handgun purchases in the state to one a month. His demand
followed the recent shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh police
officers who were murdered by 22-year-old Richard Poplawski.
One gun advocate took direct aim at Rendell's use of the
Pittsburgh shootings, charging the Governor with playing
politics. He noted that two of the three officers killed were
shot not by an assault rifle but a pump-action shotgun and .357
revolver. He further noted that Poplawski, already the subject of
several protection-from-abuse court orders, should have
automatically been prevented from purchasing or owning guns under
current Pennsylvania law. The laws, it was said, don't work, and
Rendell wants more of them. Through a spokesman, Rendell
disagreed, citing what he called a rising level of gun violence
in the state.
The speakers, according to Harrisburg Patriot-News
reporter John Luciew, included the Republican State Senate Whip,
Senator Jane Orie of Allegheny County -- Pittsburgh. Also
participating was John Sigler, the president of the National
Rifle Association.
Gun control has long been a "third rail" issue in Pennsylvania.
While outsiders view the state in terms of its two largest
cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the state in fact has a
large rural component that has focused repeatedly on Second
Amendment rights. The pattern began when gun control first
emerged as an issue following the assassinations of President
John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Senator Robert F.
Kennedy in the 1960s. In a surprise upset in 1968,
then-Republican Congressman Richard Schweiker defeated former
Philadelphia mayor and then-U.S. Senator Joseph Clark, who was
running for re-election. Clark, a longtime liberal, had become a
strong supporter of gun control. From that campaign forward
Pennsylvania candidates have been leery of being depicted as
anti-Second Amendment.
Rendell has no plans to run for office again in the state and was
accused by gun owners at the State Capitol rally of seeking to
burnish his credentials for a future job in the Obama
administration.
