Lloyd Smucker would rather talk about tax reform. Maybe education.
There are a lot of topics the next state senator from the 13th District will need to address, said Smucker, one of four Republican candidates for that post.
But instead, Smucker, a West Lampeter Township supervisor, has found himself talking about guns. A sportsman himself, Smucker says he is a staunch supporter of gun rights. One of his opponents, Lancaster County Recorder of Deeds Steve McDonald, wonders if he supports them enough.
And now, it seems, so does the National Rifle Association.
In a letter sent to West Lampeter supervisors in late February, John Hohenwarter, the NRA's Pennsylvania state liaison, wrote that a West Lampeter ordinance prohibiting the possession of "firearms, bows and arrows, air or spring rifles, slings, or any other weapon" on township property, like public parks, violates state and federal laws.
"I would respectfully urge your solicitor to reexamine this ordinance as soon as possible," wrote Hohenwarter. The township solicitor is doing just that, said West Lampeter manager Ray D'Agostino; supervisors may get a look at the revised law at the board's April 14 meeting.
McDonald had raised the issue of the township's gun ban after Smucker and former county commissioner Paul Thibault attended an NRA banquet in Lancaster on Feb. 23; McDonald's comments were featured in newspaper stories on Feb. 26. The letter from the NRA was dated Feb. 28.
Hohenwarter said the issue came to the NRA's attention after a few local members alerted the national organization. Smucker suspects the McDonald campaign lodged the complaints.
"I'm flabbergasted Mr. McDonald continues to raise this issue," said Smucker. He reiterated his claim last month that in all his years on the township planning commission and, later, the board of supervisors, that he's never heard a single complaint about the ordinance from township residents.
"We're working to fix" the ordinance, he said. "But I've urged Mr. McDonald to give up the negative campaign tactics."
McDonald, however, said in an e-mail that he had not seen the letter "and just heard the other day that one existed.
"I only wish I were powerful enough to tell the NRA what to do," he said.
But he too reiterated his earlier position: "It's clear that the ordinance is in violation of both the U.S. Constitution as well as the Constitution of our Commonwealth and I will always stand up for citizens' rights," he wrote.
"I am glad the NRA followed my lead on this important issue."
A Smucker campaign flier pictures the candidate with another man wielding a shotgun. The accompanying text quotes Smucker: "I know that to deal with gun crime we need to get tough on criminals and enforce the laws already on the books — not infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners and sportsmen."
In an interview last week, Hohenwarter said the NRA was not looking to intervene in a local political race; the letter was merely an attempt to clarify the law for West Lampeter officials.
"It's not unusual to have ordinances like this," said Hohenwarter last week. The NRA's letter, he said, is "fairly standard ... we just basically pass it along to the solicitor."
The letter does not threaten litigation. But it does point out that the whole purpose of Article I, Section 21 of the Pennsylvania Constitution — "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned" — is to prevent confusion. Without it, he said, the law might differ from municipality to municipality, "making compliance impossible for law-abiding gun owners. In fact, gun owners would have difficulty even knowing about laws, much less understanding them."
Smucker, McDonald, Thibault and Bill Neff, a local business owner who lives in York County, are running in the April 22 primary for the GOP nomination to run against Democrat Jose Urdaneta to replace state Sen. Gibson Armstrong, R-Refton, who is retiring.
After the Feb. 22 NRA banquet, McDonald had issued a press release attacking Smucker and Thibault for not overturning gun-ban ordinances while they served in public office. Thibault, McDonald charged, failed to overturn a ban on handguns in county parks enacted in the 1970s. Thibault told the Intelligencer Journal that he didn't even realize guns were banned in state parks, but in any case, the McDonald campaign "needs to be looking forward at the problems the state faces today, not at some obscure regulation from a generation ago."
In February, county commissioners scrapped a plan to update the ban on handguns in county parks after
5thEstate.com publisher Ron Harper Jr., and then several other local residents, complained that the ban violated the rights of those licensed by the state to carry concealed weapons.
Harper is a friend of McDonald's and served as his campaign manager and spokesman when McDonald ran for county commissioner in 1999.
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817. 