Pa. House passes universal background checks for guns, fails to pass other reforms

• Jaxon White/WITF
  BioRecent Stories

  

  I report on how decisions made in Pennsylvania’s state Capitol ripple across communities throughout the commonwealth. My coverage centers on the General Assembly, the Governor’s Office and the broader landscape of Pennsylvania politics.
  
  I’m especially interested in the development and regulation of artificial intelligence, how public officials manage taxpayer dollars and policy ideas aimed at addressing everyday — and sometimes overlooked — challenges.
  
  I grew up just north of Pittsburgh in Beaver County, Pa., and graduated from Bucknell University in 2023. My first reporting gig was at LNP | LancasterOnline as a politics reporter, before I started at WITF in the summer of 2025.

 Spencer Platt / Getty Images

House lawmakers on Tuesday passed a proposal mandating background checks for purchasers of any type of firearm in Pennsylvania, though the proposal faces long odds of passing in the Senate. 

Pennsylvania already requires a background check for someone to obtain a handgun. But long guns, like rifles and shotguns, are exempt from that rule.

State Rep. Perry Warren, D-Bucks, sought to close the “loopholes” with his legislation, which he said he hopes would help reduce the roughly 1,600 Pennsylvanians who die from gun violence every year. 

The bill passed in a 104 to 99 vote. Two other gun reform proposals debated Tuesday failed by one vote, after Rep. Frank Burns, D-Cambria, joined Republicans in opposing the bills.

Those proposals would have banned 3D-printed ghost guns that lack any metal components and allowed judges to temporarily confiscate firearms from people deemed a threat to themselves or others. 

Each gun reform bill was cleared along party lines in the House Judiciary Committee last week — a move celebrated by advocates. 

Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA, said the House vote for a universal background check was the “bare minimum” lawmakers could do. 

“The failure of other common sense safety measures on the House floor fails all of us,” Garber said of the two bills that were not passed. “And in the wake of so many recent mass shootings around this country, we are sickened that 102 members of the Pennsylvania House refused to make us safer.”

Senate Republicans have remained quiet on the House’s gun reform bills this year. 

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, did not respond to a request for comment on the universal background check proposal.

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