Pennsylvania state police back down on rifle registration scheme
January 31, 11:42 PM DC Gun Rights Examiner Mike Stollenwerk
In July of 2009, the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) mysteriously told federal gun dealers doing business in Pennsylvania that they were required to report to the PSP all purchasers’ identity and item serial number information for transfers of certain long gun “frames” or “receivers” for guns such as the popular AR-15 rifle, just like Pennsylvania’s Uniform Firearms Act (UFA) requires for handguns. Some gun dealers told the State Police “no way,” noting that compliance with the State Police demarche constituted a criminal violation of the UFA.
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Enter Rich Banks, a federal gun dealer in Mountain Top, PA. Banks posted last week to the popular gun rights forum run by the Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association that he literally taunted the State Police for months trying to get them to take some action against him so that he could have legal standing to sue them over what Bank’s felt was an illegal mandate:
“I was in contact with PICS regularly through this ordeal, until they refused to talk to me anymore. And told them I would not be complying with their unfounded demand. I was also involved with other dealers/retail entities that shall remain nameless (at their request) in an effort to file a legal challenge. . . . So in order to gain legal standing, we . . . were recording (video/audio) a virgin receiver transfer, sans SP4-113, with commentary about how dealers would properly execute a rcvr transfer. This instructional video and evidence of my refusal to follow PSP/PICS edict was to be posted publicly as a challenge (more like dare) the PSP to charge me, revoke my license (which they can’t) or cut me off from PICS like they threatened others with. Had they cut me off from PICS I would have legal standing to sue. We were literally days away from releasing this challenge.”
But while Banks and a loose network of gun sealer allies were in a tense standoff with the PSP, essentially yelling “molon labe” (Greek for the “come and get them,” allegedly shouted in 280 BC at the Persian Army by Spartan King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae when the Persians demanded that they put down their weapons), another source of pressure was being exerted on the PSP. Just as the Greek navy led by a politician named Themistocles pressured the Persians at sea while Leonidas held them back on land, the Potter Leader-Enterprise reports that Representative Martin Causer (R – Cameron, Mckean, and Potter Counties) fired volleys of “sharp letters” at the Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner, Colonel Frank E. Pawlowski, demanding to know why Pawlowski did an end-run around both the Legislature and Attorney General to enact a de facto long gun registration rule.
And a few days ago, without fanfare, the PSP quietly rescinded their July 2009 rule by way of its January 2010 Pennsylvania Gun Dealer Newsletter.
