Gun Violence Prevention Advocate, 

In late July of 2021, a deadly shootout shook Mt. Lebanon – a quiet, leafy suburb in Pittsburgh’s South Hills. A troubled young man shot his parents during a fight, and opened fire on police who responded to the scene. The tragedy ended with two concerned parents killed, the shooter dead by firearm suicide, and two PA police officers injured in the crossfire.¹

Community members reckoned with the ways in which this tragedy was preventable. Law enforcement had been called to the house multiple times prior because the shooter's parents voiced deep concern about their son’s firearms and ongoing mental health crisis. But police felt “limited under the law,” and did not remove the weapons.²

The exact tool that could’ve prevented this trauma is stalled in Harrisburg. Your advocacy got the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) bill passed out of the House with bipartisan support in May.³ Now, Senator Lisa Baker, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has the sole power to move this bill forward in the Senate. The first step is scheduling a hearing on this and other gun violence prevention bills.

Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) would allow family members and law enforcement to ask the court to temporarily remove firearms from individuals in crisis after going through full due process. Evidence shows they work at preventing firearm suicides and mass shootings.⁴

Today, we’re launching a multi-part campaign to call on Senate Judiciary Chair Lisa Baker to do her job of keeping Pennsylvanians safe and schedule a hearing on gun violence prevention legislation, including the ERPO bill.

We need the Senate to hold hearings on each of the four bills in our Common Agenda to End Gun Violence⁵ – bipartisan legislation based on the best evidence for preventing gun violence. This includes Extreme Risk Protection Orders⁶ and universal background checks⁷, which both passed the House with bipartisan support, as well as safe storage bills⁸ in the Senate, and lost and stolen firearm reporting.⁹

A hearing would force the PA Senate to finally confront gun violence as a crisis in our Commonwealth – and to hear from survivors and the experts that are working to end the epidemic. 

Can you take just a minute today to take action and send a message to Sen. Baker and urge her to call a hearing on ERPO legislation?

Sincerely,
Adam Garber
Executive Director
CeaseFirePA Action

¹https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/man-kills-parents-shootout-with-police-mt-lebanon/ 

²  https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/mt-lebanon-double-murder-suicide-victims-identified/ 

³ https://www.ceasefirepa.org/general-interest/pa-house-passes-two-gun-safety-bills-with-bipartisan-support/ 

⁴ https://www.ceasefirepa.org/our-work/extreme-risk-protection-orders/

⁵ https://www.ceasefirepa.org/our-work/common-agenda/

⁶ H.B. 1018

⁷ H.B. 714

⁸ S.B. 427 & S.B. 431

⁹ S.B. 461