Philly shooting delays Wolf’s gun order

• Emily Previti/PA Post
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Emily is a reporter for WITF who’s been covering voting and elections since July 2019 as part of her former role with statehouse accountability news organization PA Post. She was the senior reporter for statewide public media collaboration Keystone Crossroads. Previously, she covered city hall for PennLive/The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pa.), was a watchdog and city hall reporter at The Press of Atlantic City and reported for the Northwest Herald. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
  
  See other articles by Emily Previti for WITF.

 Matt Rourke / AP Photo

Officers gather for crowd control near a massive police presence set up outside a house as they investigate a shooting in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019.

‘Postponed until a later date to be determined’

Matt Rourke / AP Photo

Officers gather for crowd control near a massive police presence set up outside a house as they investigate a shooting in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019.

• In response to the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio earlier this month, Gov. Tom Wolf announced Wednesday that he planned to sign an executive order to implement more than two dozen initiatives to address gun violence. Wolf’s office said the governor would announce the order Thursday morning. But after multiple Philadelphia police officers were shot Wednesday afternoon while executing a warrant in North Philly, the governor’s office postponed the action. Earlier in the day, PA Post’s Ed Mahon and Brett Sholtis published a preview story about Wolf’s plan.

• Some state lawmakers also are renewing a push for tighter gun laws in Pennsylvania. PA Post’s Ed Mahon and I talked about the issue with State of the State host Katie Meyer in the latest podcast episode.

• Ed also has a story about extreme risk protection bills introduced this session in both state legislative chambers. These so-called red flag laws would create a process for people to petition the courts to temporarily disarm a loved one likely to be a threat to themselves or others.

• Pennsylvanians have to give up their guns and other weapons if they’re subject to a final protection from abuse order in a contested case, under new rules effective last spring. The commonwealth’s treatment of firearms relinquishment in PFA cases had last changed more than a decade prior. But other gun laws have changed more recently, including enhanced penalties for straw purchases that took effect during the Corbett administration.

• Also — bulletproof backpacks. They’ve been available for a few years. But PennLive’s Jana Benscoter recently took a closer look at their effectiveness.

Best of the rest

Matt Rourke / AP Photo

State Sen. Katie Muth, D-Montgomery, center left, embraces Carolyn Fortney, who was sexually abused as a child by a Roman Catholic Priest, during a news conference at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., Wednesday, April 10, 2019.

• Last summer, Pennsyvlania released a scathing grand jury report on clergy abuse in the Catholic Church. A year later, 20 states and D.C.have adopted some of the reforms recommended in the Pa. report, yet those reforms remain stalled in Harrisburg. PennLive’s Ivey DeJesus digs into the situation in this story. State Attorney General Josh Shapiro also addressed the anniversary of the grand jury report in a Twitter thread.

• When classes resume later this month, Eastern Lancaster County School District will require transgender students to use locker rooms matching their biological sex. While the district says it will have single-occupant, gender-neutral restrooms for transgender students, a lawsuit to block the rules altogether could closely follow, PA Post’s Ed Mahon reports in this update. Over at  LNP, Alex Geli has a pieceabout the newly appointed Elanco district board member who backs the biological sex mandate.

• Pa’s dairy industry has suffered amid declining milk consumption, export competition and tariffs — though not as badly as some other top-producing states, according to this data from Oregon’s Capital Free-Press. The 2018 federal Farm Bill includes provisions designed to help dairy farmers weather the tough economic conditions — and there could be more relief in the near future, WPSU’s Min Xian reports here.