Episode 41: Pennsylvania’s big gun debate

• Katie Meyer
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Katie Meyer was WITF’s Capitol Bureau Chief from 2016-2020. While at WITF, she covered all things state politics for public radio stations throughout Pennsylvania. Katie came to Harrisburg by way of New York City, where she worked at Fordham University’s public radio station, WFUV, as an anchor, general assignment reporter, and co-host of an original podcast. A 2016 graduate of Fordham, she earned several awards for her work at WFUV, including four 2016 Gracies.
  
  Katie is a native New Yorker, though she originally hails from Troy, a little farther up the Hudson River. She can attest that the bagels are still pretty good there.
  
  WITF's Capitol Bureau Chief Desk is partially funded through generous gifts made in the memory of Tony May through the Anthony J. May Memorial Fund.
  
  For more information about Tony May, click here.

 AP Photo / Keith Srakocic

A portion of the rack displaying various models of semi-automatic sporting rifles is seen at Duke's Sport Shop in New Castle, Pa. on Thursday, March 1, 2018.

Much of this week’s political conversation has been dominated by questions about guns. Questions like, who should be able to use them? What characteristics should we should allow them to have? And is it ever OK for the government to be able to take them away?

The weekend of August 3 saw two major shootings. One at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in which 22 people were killed, and another in on a busy street in Dayton, Ohio that killed nine.

In Pennsylvania and across the country, there’s come to be a sort of standard political response to mass shootings. Politicians and others who oppose the relatively unrestricted access Americans have to guns, turn out en masse in protest.

These post-shooting protests all tend to look the same, and for good reason: gun laws haven’t really changed in a long time.

However, there have been some small—but notable—shifts in the conversation in the commonwealth.

PA Post reporters Emily Previti and Ed Mahon join us on this week’s podcast to explain.