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Bump stock ban was a fool’s errand

Philadelphia never seems to tire of providing examples that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Mayor Parker committing insanity (Photo: Inquirer)

This time, it was the city’s law banning “bump stock” devices that turn regular firearms into machine guns.

They should be banned, in my opinion.

But the city has no authority to ban them.

That is not my opinion, that has been the repeated opinion of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In her reporting, Inquirer staff writer Anna Orso gets whipsawed between her private [progressive] beliefs and grim reality.

She writes that the ban “rekindles a decades-long debate about whether the city can enact its own gun regulations.”

There is no “debate.”

There is only the irrational wet dream by gun control nuts that they can write their own laws when the state Constitution forbids that. It is settled law. Settled many times.

Orso actually admits that a few paragraphs later: “Philadelphia has repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to pass its own gun legislation and overturn state law that prohibits the city from doing so. Those efforts have led to multiple court decisions blocking other local regulations.”

So much for the “debate.”

As a matter of fact, Pennsylvania’s Constitutional protection of gun-owner’s rights is stronger, more brief, and more clear  than the Second Amendment. Read it for yourself: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.”

No foggy language about “well-regulated militias,” just the right of a citizen to bear arms shall not be questioned.”

So why did Mayor Cherelle Parker feel moved to demonstrate insanity? Why keep going to this dry well?

I can’t say, as she is usually better-grounded than to run fool’s errands by virtue signaling. 

Let’s hope this is a one-off, and she returns to reality.

Stu Bykofsky

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