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Hatboro Council took no further action to pursue a local lost or stolen handgun reporting ordinance last month, but may adopt a resolution at a later date in support of statewide adoption of the ordinance.
Council announced at its Feb. 8 meeting it would vote Feb. 22 to advertise a future vote on a lost or stolen handgun reporting ordinance, which would require citizens to report their lost or stolen handguns to the police up to 72 hours after discovery or face a fine or imprisonment.
Before the meeting, Hatboro Mayor Norm Hawkes suggested the ordinance be removed from the agenda because a vote to send a resolution to the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Gov. Ed Rendell would have had a better chance of passing, he said.
“I don’t know whose support it would have gotten or not gotten,” Hawkes said of the ordinance. “I thought it was a compromise.”
“The ultimate goal is to get it [the state] to adopt it on a state level. The local ordinances are trying to push the state in that direction.”
In the future, maybe two years down the road, he thinks the ordinance will come up for a vote again, he added.
“My personal opinion is he [Hawkes] realized that the ordinance was not going to be passed and he didn’t want to have the negative impact of it not passing so he had it withdrawn instead,” Aleta Ostrander, chairwoman of the borough’s public safety committee, said.
Council had decided it would also consider sending a resolution to support the ordinance on a state level, an idea suggested by council President Marianne Reymer.
Upon reviewing the proposed resolution, Solicitor Christen Pionzio advised against a vote for Feb. 22, and is preparing a more simple resolution that she thinks would be appropriate for officials to consider.
“The resolution was full of facts and statistics that I had no independent knowledge if they were true or not,” Pionzio said. “I couldn’t recommend they adopt something without knowing that the facts and data contained in the resolution were accurate.”
Hawkes received the resolution under consideration from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, of which he is a member, he said.
“Everything in there is fact,” he said. “I think you have a difficult time telling the families of police officers that were killed in Pennsylvania that it was propaganda.”
The resolution states that Hatboro requests the Legislature and governor “take rapid action to address the epidemic of illegal handgun trafficking in our commonwealth by passing a statewide lost or stolen handgun reporting requirement law.”
Ostrander had received at least 40 calls from Hatboro residents asking her not to support the ordinance, she said.
“I’ve had, I believe, four people tell me they were in support of it,” she said.
Hawkes said everyone he has spoken to is in favor of the ordinance.
“The only negative comments I got were from the people who came to the [council] meeting,” he said. “Everyone has told me it’s a good ordinance and it should be passed in Hatboro.”
Last week a missing handgun was reported in the borough and recovered, said police Chief James Gardner. “It’s not something that comes up all the time,” he said.
Nearby, Ambler Borough Council on Feb. 16 chose to support the ordinance on a state level instead of enacting a local ordinance due to concerns it would pre-empt state law.
A lost or stolen gun bill, House Bill 29, was considered in the House Judiciary Committee in January 2007, but did not get enough votes to move forward.
