With the help of Gun Owners of America (GOA) and its members in Pennsylvania, lawmakers in the Keystone State have axed several aspects of Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro’s gun control schemes from the state budget.
According to a GOA alert sent to members in Pennsylvania, three of the most egregious line items were removed. That means no funding for the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) to increase social media spying on gun owners, no funding for the PSP to harass lawful firearms retailers and no funding for Shapiro’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
“All three have been successfully axed from Pennsylvania’s 2024-2025 budget,” the alert stated. “GOA would especially like to thank Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman for his efforts in successfully negotiating these items out of the budget.”
Republican State Sen. Doug Mastriano fought the measures in the state Senate and during the appropriations process. He credited GOA with the legislature’s success in killing the funding.
“Looks like we succeeded in weeding out any infringements on 2A in the budget,” Mastriano said in a text to the organization. “Thank you for drawing attention to it. Can’t do this without you and GOA.”
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which would mirror President Joe Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is particularly problematic. One of the main problems with these taxpayer-funded bureaucracies is that membership is stacked to arrive at a predetermined outcome and use state resources to perpetuate their narrative.
However, GOA is warning its members that Shapiro is likely to proceed with that scheme despite them not being funded by the legislature.
“The fight is far from over,” the organization wrote in the alert. “Governor Shapiro has promised to set up the Office of Gun Violence Prevention anyway, without legislative authority or appropriation. This office will be nothing more than a propaganda machine to justify more calls for gun control. Shapiro has gone rogue before, writing an opinion to ban 80% lowers when he was Attorney General of Pennsylvania.”
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention was part of a proposed $100 million Gov. Shapiro had requested for funding “gun violence prevention” in the commonwealth over the next year, all of which were strongly supported by various gun-ban organizations. $1 million from that prop0sal would have gone to create the office within the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD).
This was not the first win for Pennsylvania gun owners in the past few months. In late April, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled that the state law forbidding adults under 21 from applying for a carry permit is unconstitutional, as is the law banning adults 18- to 20-years old from open carrying during an emergency.
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