The following opinion piece by CeaseFirePA Board President Phil Goldsmith was published in the Harrisburg Patriot-News on January 9, 2009.

When Pittsburgh City Council voted 6 to 1 for a law requiring handgun owners to report to the police when their guns were lost or stolen, they made it the fourth city in Pennsylvania to pass such a law.

Philadelphia, Allentown, Pottsville and most recently Reading have passed similar laws, and action is pending in Lancaster and other cities.
This action is important for a number of reasons. First, law enforcement officials, including police chiefs in these cities, believe reporting of lost and stolen guns will help track down "straw" purchasers more quickly. It will help police solve crimes sooner and stem the flow of blood through our streets.

If people need proof of that, look at a recent incident in Montgomery County, where police arrested a youth who had planned a massacre at his high school. How did they catch him? He had stolen guns, which the owner, his father, had reported missing to the police.

These laws are important for a couple of other reasons. The action of cities as large as Philadelphia and as small as Pottsville, municipalities in the eastern part of the state (Allentown) as well as the western part (Pittsburgh) belie the argument of organizations like the National Rifle Association that gun violence is simply a Philadelphia problem.

Of course, the victims, their families, law enforcement officials and elected officials that represent large and small municipalities throughout the state know otherwise. Gun violence has been increasing much more rapidly in other parts of the state. Pittsburgh is nearing a record high in homicides. And barely a day goes by that newspapers in cities large and small aren't filled with headlines reporting the latest handgun tragedy.

So the handgun violence issue that threatens our communities, puts innocent people in harm's way and inf licts mortal wounds to our police can no longer be swept aside with the canard that it's a Philadelphia problem.

Recent action by Reading, Pittsburgh, Pottsville, Allentown and Philadelphia stand in stark contrast to the inaction of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, which last spring voted down a similar bill. In short, elected local officials are saying to state officials, "If you won't stand up to the NRA and protect our citizens, we will!"

Most of the debate over the passage of the local lost-and-stolen bills hasn't focused on whether it is needed but whether it is legal. The argument is that only the state has the right to pass gun laws. In short, local governments are pre-empted from doing so.

That legal challenge is now being debated in the courts, but council members of five cities have rightfully decided to take action now and have passed local lost- and stolen-handgun reporting laws. They know full well that resolving these cases in our courts could take years. In the meantime, the lives of many more people will be lost, felled by unreported lost and stolen guns that have found their way into the wrong hands.

And remember, these laws don't violate anyone's right to own a gun; they simply add a simple commonsense responsibility to gun owners to report to the police when they know that a gun has been lost or stolen.

No one believes passage of these laws is the total solution to our violence issue. Clearly, much more needs to be done, from better enforcement to better education to more job opportunities to parental responsibility.

But in acting now, these local officials are refusing to sit on their hands waiting for a global answer or for the state to do something.
To paraphrase the expression that "all politics is local," so is all death. These local officials must deal with this violence on a daily basis. By their recent votes, they are saying, "enough is enough."

We can hope their voices will eventually be heard in Harrisburg.

PHIL GOLDSMITH is president of the board of CeaseFirePA, a statewide organization committed to reducing handgun violence.Phil.Goldsmith@ceasefirepa.org