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House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted:	May 7, 2013 03:44 PM
From:	Representative Tim Krieger
To:	All House members
Subject:	Prohibition on Maintenance of Firearms Registry

With enactment of Pennsylvania’s Uniform Firearms Act in 1995, the Commonwealth instituted a requirement that purchasers of firearms submit to a background check. Integral to the passage of the Uniform Firearms Act was Section 6111.4, which expressly prohibited any government or law enforcement agency from maintaining or operating a “registry of firearm ownership”. Despite the plain language of the Act, the Pennsylvania State Police have created and are maintaining a database of handgun owners from data obtained from such checks. Unfortunately, by way of some tortured logic, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League v. Rendell, held that this database was not a “registry of firearm ownership”, despite having all the attributes of a registry. The bill would reverse the holding in the Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League case, by defining the term “Registry of Firearm Ownership” to make absolutely clear that the term includes any database, record or registry reflecting the sale, transfer or ownership of firearms. Passage of this bill would require the Pennsylvania State Police to destroy the existing record of sale database, and make it crystal clear that no such database can again be created or maintained.

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