English: Don’t take guns from sportsmen

By Patrick W. Connelly
Herald Staff Writer

PINE TOWNSHIP November 17, 2007 09:40 pm

— Curbing criminal misuse of guns, not taking them from the hands of sportsmen, would end gun violence in the United States, a congressman and a National Rifle Association spokesman agreed Saturday in Pine Township.
“Arm people with the facts,” Chris Cox, an executive director for the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, told about a dozen people at the Grove City Sportsman Club on Centertown Road.
Cox and U.S. Rep. Phil English of Erie, R-3rd District, held a meeting to discuss sportsmen’s issues facing Congress.
English is an asset to sportsmen and the NRA alike in proposing and passing legislation favoring them both, Cox said.
“When our rights are under attack, we go to Phil English,” Cox said.
A topic frustrating sportsmen is that some states have considered and enacted laws limiting firearm purchases to one a month per resident, Cox said.
Cox said that, if passed, each state could then easily enact more stringent purchasing regulations.
“If I can limit it to one, I can limit it none,” he said, adding that studies have shown that such a law can’t reduce a crime rate.
English said it likely wouldn’t pass in Pennsylvania if proposed. If it somehow would, he said Congress would make a ruling on it shortly after.
Although the number of hunters has dropped in recent years, sportsmen still contribute to the state’s economy, particularly in western Pennsylvania, English said.