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Gettysburg to adopt revised gun law
If adopted, the amended firearms ordinance includes provisions for re-enactments and other events where blank ammunition is fired in the borough.
By ERIN JAMES
The Evening Sun
Posted: 05/03/2009 06:38:37 PM EDT
Gettysburg officials are planning to amend a borough ordinance that regulates the discharge of firearms, adding sections specific to military ceremonies and re-enactment events.
If the Borough Council adopts the ordinance as it appears in draft form, the organizers of such events would be required to obtain and pay for a permit from the borough before shooting blank ammunition.
Officials have plans to vote on advertising the ordinance at the council's May 11 meeting so that it can be adopted in June - in time for many of the re-enactment events that take place in Gettysburg each year.
The borough's existing ordinance that regulates firearms dates back to 1968 and reads, "No person shall, except in defense of person or property, fire or discharge any gun or other firearm within the Borough of Gettysburg."
That vague description leaves a lot to interpretation, Mayor William Troxell said at a Public Safety Committee meeting in March. Troxell urged the Borough Council to consider amending the ordinance so that it no longer neglects to address the longtime Gettysburg tradition of discharging guns during re-enactment events and military ceremonies.
Following in the footsteps of previous mayors, Troxell said he often grants permission to groups like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, which request the right to fire blank cartridges. But Troxell said that practice had been called into question, given the language of the firearms ordinance.
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