EDITORIAL: Legislative negligence on guns
One of Pennsylvania’s recent gun-related tragedies occurred in the Brewerytown section of Philadelphia.
A 14-year-old boy with severe developmental disabilities found an unsecured handgun in his grandmother’s bedroom and accidentally shot his cousin, a 2-year-old girl, in the head. The toddler died a short time later at Temple University Hospital.
A spokesman for the Philadelphia district attorney’s office police later said it would charge the boy’s 54-year-old grandmother with reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of children.
The case checks many boxes regarding anything-goes gun culture and the state Legislature’s refusal to do anything that would help convert that into a culture of gun safety.
According to police, the woman did not own the weapon, but was holding it temporarily at the request of an acquaintance or relative. That person, however, later reported the gun stolen in South Carolina.
The investigation continues, as do shrugs from Pennsylvania lawmakers, most Republicans who not only refuse to enact sensible gun-safety measures to help create a safer gun culture, but who refuse to allow Philadelphia and other cities to take such measures on their own.
Pennsylvania does not require safe storage of weapons in gun safes or with trigger locks. It requires no gun-safety training for gun ownership. State law does not require gun owners to report to police when a weapon is lost or stolen, which they often do only after the weapon is used in a crime.
No one believes that any single law or series of laws will resolve gun crime and gun safety issues. But no one believed generations ago that Americans instantly would comply with mandatory seat-belt use, or that initial educational programs and laws would reduce adult cigarette use from nearly 50% of the population in the 1950s to less than 10% today.
Those efforts weren’t matters of simple enforcement. They changed entrenched culture over the course of generations. That same transition is needed now to make safety, rather than “do whatever you like and pick up the pieces later,” the standard for gun culture. Unfortunately, it has to begin with leadership that the state and federal legislatures do not have.