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Court Upholds State Police Records On Gun Purchases
Court Upholds State Police Records On Gun Purchases
Ruling Upholds Commonwealth Court Judge's 2001 Ruling
POSTED: 9:57 pm EDT October 19, 2004
UPDATED: 10:03 pm EDT October 19, 2004
PITTSBURGH -- A state police database of handgun sales is not an illegal registry of firearm ownership, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, turning away arguments by sportsmen who have challenged the database for four years.
The high court, in a 3-2 ruling, rejected arguments that the state police database violates the state's 1995 Uniform Firearms Act. The ruling upholds a Commonwealth Court judge's ruling in 2001.
Gun owners and sportsmen sued in 2000, maintaining that the computer database constitutes an illegal registry of firearms ownership.
Specifically, the lawsuit claimed that the information state police glean from handgun purchases violates the 1995 law that bars police from maintaining a registry of firearms ownership. The sportsmen also contended that the practice violates a 1997 law that requires state police to destroy certain gun-sale records within 72 hours, following a criminal record check.
Data from the purchase forms - the buyer's name, date of birth, Social Security number, the date of sale, the identity of the dealer, and the serial number, make and caliber of the handgun - are entered into a computer database that also contains criminal history information and is shared with local police.
Writing for the majority, Justice Ronald D. Castille found that the database of sales was not tantamount to an ownership registry.
"Although the database may be a registry, it is not a registry of firearm ownership ... The database does not maintain a record of all firearms owned by Pennsylvanians, which would include long guns (shotguns and rifles), or firearms that are owned by Pennsylvanians, but not purchased in the Commonwealth," Castille wrote.
State police said the provision requiring records to be destroyed within three days is intended to apply only to "long-gun" purchases, and only when the state's electronic instant background checking system breaks down for more than 48 hours. The state has kept records of handgun purchases since 1931, and it has been a state police responsibility since 1943.
In a dissent, Justices Russell M. Nigro and Sandra Schultz Newman, said the database did rise to an illegal registry of gun owners.
"Even though the database at issue here does not include every person in Pennsylvania who owns a handgun ... it nevertheless violates (state law) by keeping a partial record of handgun ownership insofar as it records those persons who either own or used to own a handgun that they purchased," Nigro wrote.
Justices Thomas Saylor and William H. Lamb, who left the bench in January, did not take part in the ruling.
The lawsuit and appeal were filed by the Allegheny County Sportsmen's League, the Lehigh Valley Firearms Coalition and four individual plaintiffs.
Michael Slavonic, a board member of the Allegheny County Sportsmen's League, said he was disappointed.
"We think we fought the good fight and I guess the situation is that right now that we have a definitive opinion from the court and we will have to look toward the Legislature for a remedy," Slavonic said.
:banghead: 
if I read "sportsmen" one more time! 