A violent crime committed with a firearm in Pennsylvania holds a mandatory five-year sentence tacked onto any other convictions for the same incident. State Rep. Tony DeLuca (D-Allegheny County) wants to amend this law to make sure those sentences are served one after another.
"What's happening is, the judges are running them concurrently instead of consecutively, and the [additional] five years don't mean anything," DeLuca said.
This often happens in cases with plea deals, he said, which defeats the purpose of additional jail time for gun violence.
Last month, Gov. Tom Wolf announced that the commonwealth's prison population has gone down for the fourth year in a row.
"The Wolf administration is concentrating on narcotics and marijuana offenses, which I certainly support," DeLuca said. "I don't support somebody committing a crime with a gun [and] being lenient on them."
In response to DeLuca's bill, Wolf said he's focusing on the positive aspects of the state's criminal justice system.
"The crime rate is down in Pennsylvania; that's a reality," Wolf said. "I think we need to look at those sorts of things rather than take a traditional approach to this, which is like something out of the 1970s or 1980s."
If the bill passes a final vote in the state House on Tuesday afternoon, it will go to the Senate.
