Closing Time: With Pennsylvania's legislative session entering its last week, here's 5 fights you may want to know more about :: 10/14/2014

Gun control:
Because little battles in this area by definition become big battles, veins are popping across the state over this attempt by gun owners' rights proponents to grant the National Rifle Association legal standing to challenge about 50 local gun ordinances that are tighter than state law.

Gun control advocates see this as a bullying intrusion on the ability of towns and cities to fight crime on their own terms: "Where I come from, bad people have guns," said Rep. Mike O'Brien, D-Philadelphia, during the recent House debate. "People who have guns, hurt you."

Gun owners, meanwhile, see it as a needed assertion of the state's power to oversee Second Amendment rights: "On something as important as Second Amendment rights, we can not have a crazy quilt of any of the hundreds of municipalities in Pennsylvania just doing whatever they want," said Rep. Jeff Pyle, R-Armstrong.

The types of local ordinances at stake here are precisely the kinds of lesser gun control measures that have been defeated at the state level for years, like requiring people to make reports of a lost or stolen handgun with police upon discovery, or prohibitions on carrying a firearm in public places.

They are also rarely enforced, but the NRA and its allies believe the time has come for stronger action against what they see as unlawful local ordinances.

Prospects for final action on this House-passed bill seemed in peril when a required Senate Judiciary Committee meeting scheduled for last Wednesday was cancelled by Chairman Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/10/closing_time_with_pa_legislati.html