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Governments offer free gun locks
Saturday, March 04, 2000 By Jeffrey Cohan, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Gun owners can lock up their weapons at no cost, starting Monday.
Mayor Murphy announced yesterday that 5,000 gun locks donated by a foundation have arrived. Gun owners can obtain the locks at any of the police department's six zone stations.
In addition, the Allegheny County sheriff's office will hand out locks with concealed-weapons permits and the city of Wilkinsburg will distribute locks from its police station beginning late next week.
"We are really encouraging people to recognize that having a weapon in their house, particularly if there are young people around, represents an enormous danger," Murphy said. "For relatively little effort, [the locks] provide a high level of safety."
The vinyl-covered, steel-cable devices look like bicycle locks. Donated by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, they thread through gun magazines and barrels to prevent a firearm's action from closing. The locks can also disable shotguns and rifles.
Gun owners also can use the locks to secure their firearms to a pipe or other immovable object.
"This gesture by the city and county helps in at least some ways to better protect the families and children in our community," Wilkinsburg Mayor Wilbert Young said.
The timing of the news conference was unrelated to Wednesday's shooting spree that left three dead and two wounded in Wilkinsburg, Murphy said. A gun lock wouldn't have prevented those killings, he said.
Murphy said Pittsburgh gun owners interested in obtaining a lock may call the mayor's service center at 412-255-2621 for the location of the police station nearest them.
State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, appeared at the news conference to tout a bill that would subject "straw" gun buyers to felony charges, with a minimum prison sentence of five years. Straw purchasers are gun store customers with clean records who buy guns and then pass them to those who can't legally obtain them.
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