Heeding God´s Call: A Gathering on Peace
Proposal for Public Witness

The Epidemic:  It´s a surprise to no one that Philadelphia suffers from an epidemic of gun violence.  It is less well-known that this epidemic extends across the state.  Cities like Pittsburgh, Reading, York, Scranton, Allentown, Easton, Erie and others are also suffering high and increasing levels of gun violence.  Harrisburg, in fact, has a higher per capita rate of gun death and injury than Philadelphia.

Furthermore, Pennsylvania has become a major and growing source for illegally trafficked handguns to states in the Nor theast USA.  PA, in fact, is already the top external source state for guns recovered from crime in New Jersey.  Cities like Camden and Trenton are flooded with illegal guns originally purchased in PA, to devastating effect.

These guns reach streets and neighborhoods through a highly developed illegal trade - gun trafficking.  These are the guns used to threaten, wound, maim and kill.  The linchpins of gun trafficking are criminal entrepreneurs - traffickers, people who stand in for them to make their bulk purchases - straw buyers and gun dealers who look the other way and enjoy the profits from volume sales.  Many such rogue gun dealers are located in Philadelphia and environs.

For many reasons, it will be difficult to gain enactment of legislative barriers to the illegal gun trade by the PA legislature for several years.  Yet there is action citizens can take that may go far to disrupting the illegal gun business.

Background to Action: The retailer who sells the most guns nationally, Wal-Mart, recently signed a Partnership Agreement with the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, intended to make straw purchasing far less likely.  The Coalition is made up of mayors from cities across the country, including several mayors of PA cities.

The Partnership Agreement is a ten-point Code of Conduct that Wal-Mart has promised to follow for all gun sales.  Analysts believe it will go far toward severely diminishing the trafficking of guns from Wal-Mart stores.

If Wal-Mart can act as a good corporate citizen in the interest of preventing straw purchasing of guns and resulting gun violence, so can gun shops throughout the Delaware Valley, PA, the Northeast and the entire country.  Doing so would make a serious and permanent dent in the illegal gun business, making illegal guns far less available on streets and in neighborhoods and driving up their prices, which would be likely to cut into the current carnage.

Saturday Public Witness:  We propose the Witness take place in front of a Philadelphia gun store with a record of selling many guns that have eventually been recovered from crimes and call for gun shops to adopt a Code of Conduct nearly identical to the Wal-Mart/Mayors Coalition.  Such an event has several attractive features, including:

~ It is radically different from the usual call for legislation, so is likely to gain substantial press coverage and appeal to many citizens who oppose activist government;

~ The ‘ask´ is not punitive to gun dealers and will be seen by press and public as reasonable.  The fact that Wal-Mart has already adopted a similar Code will also provide excellent justification.

~ The ‘ask´ can and should be taken back to local communities across PA and elsewhere after the Witness, for churches, youth groups and etc. to seek adoption by local gun shops.