A gun dealer takes issue with city gun-control laws

When Mayor Nutter signed five new gun-control measures, he invoked the spirit of 1776 and announced that the city was declaring its independence from the gun violence that has wracked Philadelphia.

Fred Delia, co-owner of Delia's Gun Shop in Wissinoming, had a different take.

He said the gun crackdown "sounds like the British are coming back."

With equal patriotic fervor, he declared that Nutter and City Council should be arrested for violating state law and a 1996 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that said only the state legislature can regulate firearms.

On Thursday, Nutter signed into law bills that limit handgun purchases to one a month, that outlaw the sale and possession of certain so-called "assault weapons," and that allow removal of firearms from "persons posing a risk of imminent personal injury" to others or themselves.

"That scares me. That looks like confiscation," Delia, 69, said as he tended his small store on Torresdale Avenue.

Nutter and City Council took action because similar measures have stalled or been rejected by the legislature. Councilman Darryl L. Clarke acknowledged that the city expects to be taken to court, but that the city needed to take a stand.

The bills prohibit persons under protection-from-abuse orders from buying or having guns and require gun owners to report to police within 24 hours any lost or stolen firearms.

"That's the only one that I agree with," Delia said about the reporting requirement. "That's common sense."

Delia predicted panic buying of guns, but also warned that if the laws were upheld in court, "I would consider moving out of the city."

But he wouldn't stop selling guns to people living in Philadelphia. He said he would move his store to a more gun-friendly town across the city line and resume his business.

He and many other gun-rights advocates expect the bills to get shot down by the courts.

Until then, the laws are now in effect. The one-gun-a-month law has a six-month implementation period.

Lou Middleton, 65, a former Philadelphia police officer who was passing time in Delia's store, called the city's new gun laws "a bunch of b.s., to put it bluntly."

Middleton, who lives in Northeast Philadelphia, said he collects guns, including old military firearms. "I have an M1A [rifle], which has a 20 clip, which cost me $2,000," he said. "Are they going to come and take it?"