The passage of House Bill 1845 comes on the heels of last week's defeat of a highly publicized amendment that would have required gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms and, if they did not, face penalties if the gun were subsequently used in a crime.

At a news conference yesterday, before the vote on the bill, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham stood next to state House Speaker Dennis O'Brien, R-Northeast Philadelphia, and praised the gun package and the speaker's overall efforts in fighting crime.

She criticized the media for, in her view, unfairly blaming O'Brien, who voted against last week's amendment sponsored by Rep. David Levdansky, D-Allegheny. (Abraham had supported the amendment.)

O'Brien "was dumped on, not only unceremoniously, but incorrectly," Abraham said, speaking in her Center City office building.

"Were we disappointed we didn't get that [the amendment]?" Abraham said. "Yeah, but, all right, so you take away a stone and you give us a mountain of gold," she said.

During the news conference, O'Brien said he voted against the Levdansky amendment because it could have wrongly incriminated a person who didn't know his or her guns were stolen.

The amendment opened a window for prosecutorial abuse, he contended, because it did not include language requiring a prosecutor to prove an owner's state of mind, or intent, for not reporting a lost or stolen firearm. It would also have had difficulty getting passed in the Senate, he said.

O'Brien said that with the passage last week of other amendments, which he supported, HB 1845 does tackle the problem of straw purchasers - people who legally buy guns for people who cannot legally buy them.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, said yesterday that the bill would now most likely be sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that the House bill, on its surface, contains positions he supports, but noted that he still needs to read the final bill and review it in detail.

The House yesterday also overwhelmingly passed four bills on prison reform. Gov. Rendell, through his spokesman Chuck Ardo, said yesterday that he supports the House prison-reform bills, but still needs to review the final House bill on gun legislation.

Under the gun-package bill:

* Gun sellers have to ensure that an application of sale is completely filled out. The application would require buyers to answer whether they are buying the gun for themselves. It would warn buyers that if they are not doing so, and if they are not legally buying the gun as a gift for a relative, they could be arrested and prosecuted on a gun crime.

_ In cases where a gun used in a crime is traced back to an alleged straw purchaser, the time period in which authorities have to charge the gun buyer with a crime would be extended.

The new bill would extend the statute of limitations for prosecution from two years to five years from the date the gun was bought, Kathy McDonnell, chief of the D.A.'s legislation unit, said after the news conference. In special circumstances, it would extend the statute of limitations to up to eight years, she said.

* Anyone simply possessing a firearm with an altered or obliterated serial number would be charged with a felony instead of a misdemeanor.

* Anyone who lies on a gun-application would face state penalties, not only federal penalties.

* Anybody who falsely reports a gun stolen would be charged with a second-degree misdemeanor, which is an increase in penalty, and would be prohibited from legally buying a gun in the state.

* The Pennsylvania State Police would have to maintain a registry of lost and stolen guns.

The prison-reform bills, designed in part to alleviate overcrowding in county prisons while ensuring public safety, would:

* Require anyone sentenced to two to five years behind bars to be housed in a state prison rather than in a county jail. The state system would also benefit inmates who need mental-health or drug-treatment services, Abraham said.

* In cases where an offender is sentenced to less than two years, judges would have to state at the time of sentencing whether the defendant is eligible for early parole from county prison by participating in a re-entry plan before the minimum sentence date.

This measure would benefit prosecutors and victims by giving them notice that such offenders could be paroled early. *