Subject: Firing Weapons

If any person shall willfully and maliciously shoot at another without wounding (or shoot at or into any railroad passenger coach, station, station platform, waiting room, or steamboat occupied by any employee, passenger or other person or persons, or cast at or into the same a stone or other dangerous or deadly missile, or draw or present a pistol with intent to willfully and maliciously shoot in or on a railway passenger coach, station, station platform, waiting room or steamboat occupied by any employee, passenger or other person or persons), or shoot at and wound another with the intention to kill him, so that he does not die thereby, or shall wound a person other than the person shot at, so that he does not die thereby, with a gun, or other instrument loaded with leaden bullet or other substance, or shall willfully and maliciously cut, strike or stab another with a knife, sword or other deadly weapon with intention to kill, if the person so stabbed, cut or bruised die not thereby, or shall willfully and maliciously administer poison to another, if death do not ensue in consequence thereof, he, and any person who aided, counselled or advised or encouraged him, shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than one nor more than five years.

To regulate the buying, caring, storing, selling and using of gun powder and fire crackers, and fireworks manufactured or prepared therefrom, and all other combustible or explosive substances, the exhibition of fireworks, the discharge of firearms and the lights, in barns, stables and other buildings, and restrain the making of bonfires at any place within the limits of the city.

“An ordinance providing for the punishment of parties discharging missiles from air guns and other weapons within the corporate limits of the town” (This statute legalized ordinances passed under a mayor who was not yet a U.S. citizen).

For greater certainty it is hereby specified that, in addition to the other powers hereby conferred upon said board, are the following: . . . To regulate and prohibit the use of guns, pistols, firearms and fireworks of all descriptions within the city.

Be it further enacted, That the mayor and aldermen of said city shall have the right and authority to provide for the inspection of steam boilers, to regulate and prevent the storage of gunpowder, tar, pitch . . . or other combustible or explosive substances or material, with the limits of said city; and to regulate the use of lights in stables and shops or other places, or building bonfires; to regulate or prevent the sale and use of fireworks, firecrackers, torpedoes, skyrockets, roman candles, firing of guns, pistols, anvils and every kind of gaming or hunting within the corporate limits of said city.

The council shall have power to pass ordinances prohibiting the firing of guns, crackers, roman candles, sky-rockets, or any other fireworks, or the throwing of fire balls, or the firing of any other combination of gunpowder or other combustible or dangerous material within the city. . .

Such homicide is manslaughter in the first degree when committed without a design to effect death, either 1. By a person engaged in committing or attempting to commit a misdemeanor, affecting the person or property, either of the person killed, or of another; or 2. In the heat of passion, but in a cruel and unusual manner, or by means of a dangerous weapon; 3. By shooting another with a gun, or other firearm when resulting from carelessness in mistaking the person shot for a deer or other animal.

It shall be unlawful for any person or persons, body politic or corporate, or other form or association, to practice shooting at any mark, board, sign, tree, bank, or other object with any gun, rifle, cannon, mortar, pistol or other firearm within the limits of this State, whether on land or water, for military drill, amusement or skill, without first obtaining in writing the consent to so use any such firearms of all freeholders, tenants or occupants of real estate residing within the carrying capacity of such firearm, and secondly, without first obtaining leave of the Commissioners of the county within which said shooting is proposed to be carried on, and the petition to said County Commissioners for such leave shall be accompanied with the written consent of each and every of such freeholder, tenant, . . . and the Board of County Commissioners aforesaid shall in no case grant such leave to practice with firearms if in their opinion the use of the public highways or streets of any real estate sub-division be endangered by the use of such firearms . . .

§ 1. Be it enacted that six months after the passage of this act it shall be unlawful for any person to discharge, on the streets or alleys, of any city or borough in this Commonwealth, a flobert rifle, air gun, spring gun, or any implement which impels with force a metal pellet of any kind. § 2. Any person violating this act shall be arrested, and fined in the sum of five dollars before any committing magistrate; and for the second offense, shall be fined in the sum of fifteen dollars, and may undergo an imprisonment in the county jail for a period not less than ten days and not exceeding thirty days, the person so offending to pay all costs of prosecution.