laws.show

1929 Pa. Laws 777, An Act prohibiting the sale, giving away, transfer, purchasing, owning, possession and use of machine guns: §§1 and 2

  • Year:
  • 1929
Jurisdiction:

§ 1. Be it enacted, etc., That the term “machine gun” as used in this act, shall mean any firearm that fires two or more shots consecutively at a single function of the trigger or firing device. § 2. It shall be unlawful for any person, copartnership, association or corporation to sell, or give, or transfer, any machine gun to any person, copartnership, association or corporation within this Commonwealth; and it shall be unlawful for any person, copartnership, association, or corporation to purchase, own or have in possession any machine gun. Any person violating any of the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be sentenced to pay a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and undergo imprisonment by separate or solitary confinement at labor not exceeding five years. § 3. Any person who shall commit, or attempt to commit, any crime within this Commonwealth, when armed with a machine gun, shall, upon conviction of such crime or attempt to commit such crime, in addition to the punishment for the crime for which he has been convicted, be sentenced to separate and solitary confinement at labor for a term not exceeding ten years. Such additional penalty of imprisonment shall commence upon the expiration or termination of the sentence imposed for the crime of which he stands convicted, and shall not run concurrently with such sentence. § 4. Nothing contained in this act shall prohibit the manufacture for, and sale of, machine guns to the military forces of the United States, or of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or to any police department of this Commonwealth, or of any political subdivision thereof, nor to the purchase or possession of machine guns by such governments and departments; and nothing contained in this act shall prohibit any organization, branch, camp or post of veterans, or any veteran of any war in which the United States was engaged, from owning and possessing a machine gun as a relic, if a permit for such ownership or possession has been obtained from the sheriff of the county, which permit is at all times attached to such machine gun. The sheriffs of the several counties are hereby authorized, upon application and the payment of a fee of one dollar, to issue permits for the ownership and possession of machine guns by veteran and organizations, branches, camps or posts of veterans and organizations, branches, camps or posts of veterans, upon production to the sheriff of such evidence as he may require that the organization, branch, camp or post is a bona fide organization of veterans, or that any such veteran applicant is a veteran of good moral character and reputation, and that the ownership and possession of such machine gun is actually desired as a relic.