Wolf uses budget speech to urge gun control
HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Wolf devoted a section of his annual state budget speech on Tuesday to expressing dismay over a lack of action to curb gun deaths, exhorting lawmakers to make this “the year we choose to stop being cynical about the politics of gun violence.”
It was unusual for a governor to devote a lengthy section of the address to a single policy issue, and his audience was a Legislature that has shown little appetite for policies the second-term Democrat supports.
Those proposals, Mr. Wolf said, include universal background checks on gun sales, mandatory reporting for lost or stolen guns, red flag laws to take guns from those at risk of harming someone and better counseling services for troubled schoolchildren.
“Now I know there’s no law that can eliminate every act of gun violence. But the steps I’m proposing are supported by the evidence — and supported by the vast majority of Pennsylvanians,” Mr. Wolf told a joint session of the Legislature. “We can pass them tomorrow, and, by doing so, we could make our commonwealth safer.”
House
Republican spokesman Mike Straub said his caucus plans to focus on tougher criminal penalties for criminals convicted of gun crimes.
Lawmakers and Mr. Wolf last year set aside $3.2 million for private schools through the Department of Education’s safe schools grant program. The state also has a $60 million public school security grant program established after the high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., a program Mr. Wolf’s budget proposes to cut by 75%.
Mr. Wolf’s budget proposal seeks $6 million in new money to prevent gun violence through a grant program administered by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. He also wants another $4 million for a Philadelphia-based gun violence task force.
A rare exception to the general stalemate over gun legislation occurred a few weeks before the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill in October 2018, when Mr. Wolf signed legislation requiring those convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence or subject to protective orders to give up their guns within 24 hours.