State Sen. Sharif Street: State gun laws are killing Pennsylvanians

The year I was born — 1974 — Pennsylvania passed a law that would dramatically impact life in my community.

The passage of the Limitation on the Regulation of Firearms and Ammunition Act by the Pennsylvania General Assembly would affect my immediate and future generations. It has become one of the most destructive public safety laws in the last 50 years.

Colloquially, it is called the commonwealth’s “gun law preemption act.” It meant cities like Philadelphia, where I grew up, where my father would serve as a City Council member and eventually mayor, could not pass their own gun safety laws. This deadly limitation is still on the books and continues to — in many ways — tie the hands of local leaders when it comes to enacting lifesaving local policies.

The devastation of this one policy was dependent on a second decision made again and again by leaders of the General Assembly — refusing to pass numerous evidence-based bills to stem the rising tide of gun violence.

I first experienced the consequences of this fatal one-two punch at 12 years old, while attending a community event. A man pulled out a Uzi, a high-powered rapid-fire weapon. He missed his intended target, but inadvertently shot a young woman in the ankle. She survived — and so did my vivid memory of that incident.

The fallout from shootings is incalculable. The loss of life, the weight of grief, and the physical, psychological, and emotional trauma cannot truly be measured.

As I grew older, I attended funerals for family and friends. I helped to bury children, bearing their young bodies to a grave as mothers and fathers wailed. I buried my own nephew, Salahaldin “La La” Mahmoud, just a few years ago.

I helped to bury children.

My story isn’t unique. It was only a matter of time until I was personally struck by the disproportionate impact of Harrisburg’s policy choices on the community I now represent in North Philadelphia. La La was one of 50 Philadelphians killed within just five days in the month of July 2021.

Black Pennsylvanians are 21 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than their white counterparts. When I ask at community events and schools if anyone knows someone lost to gun violence, almost every hand goes up.

As a state senator, I have a front-row seat to the decision-making that allows this epidemic to continue. After La La was shot in 2021, colleagues contacted me with condolences. I know they were heartfelt. I appreciate the funding they helped secure for community programs over the years. But when I raised gun safety policies that had languished for years — such as red flag laws that remove guns from people deemed at risk to others or themselves, safe storage, and the reporting of lost and stolen firearms — there was a painful silence.

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For every loss, community members joined with local officials to demand action. They pointed to research from Connecticut and Missouri that requiring a permit can lead to decreases in murders and suicides by gun. Red flag laws — also known as extreme risk protection orders — would grant lifesaving tools to families, as they have in New Jersey and Delaware. And numerous other studies have shown that keeping guns away from people intending to hurt themselves or others would reduce this epidemic.

Each time the General Assembly decides to bury its head in the sand, this inaction has far-reaching effects. For decades, lifesaving solutions that have cut gun violence significantly in our neighboring states of New Jersey and New York have languished in a legislative committee. Legislative leaders routinely refuse to hold hearings.

Hundreds of legislators have cycled through the General Assembly since the passage of the Limitation on the Regulation of Firearms and Ammunition Act in 1974. With rare exceptions, the General Assembly has chosen to ignore the pleas of community members, experts, local officials, and advocates. When local leaders asked for the power to chart a homegrown course of action by ending preemption, understanding that statewide policy change was unlikely, the General Assembly tried to introduce a law that enabled the National Rifle Association to sue counties that enacted their own gun safety solutions. (Thankfully, that law was struck down in 2016 by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.)

This is the reality that the state Supreme Court must confront Wednesday when it hears arguments in Crawford v. Commonwealth, in which residents of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh who have felt the direct effects of gun violence are seeking a court order to enable local communities to enact laws that help curb this epidemic.

Pennsylvanians should no longer be forced to live in a world where their elected officials have subjected them to a flood of firearms without adequate safeguards, causing ever-escalating physical destruction and emotional pain to their residents. Not when proven solutions such as safe storage of firearms, permit to purchase, reporting lost and stolen firearms, and red flag laws could save lives.

Everyone has the right to live a life free from violence. As a survivor, a state senator, and a Philadelphian, I look forward to the day when decades of indecision and indifference toward evidence-based policies are replaced with legislators willing to act. I look forward to a time when prayers, in the wake of gun violence, are met with commonsense policy we know will save lives.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is the last remaining opportunity to curtail the fatal one-two punch of preemption and inaction. Anything else will continue to deprive my community, and all Pennsylvanians, of their constitutional right to live safely.

Sharif Street represents the 3rd Senatorial District, which includes North Philadelphia.