Time to remove bloodstain from the state's reputation

(3/6/13) The Reading Eagle.

The Issue: Legislation again is introduced to ban live-animal shoots in the commonwealth.

Our Opinion: Such a prohibition should have been passed years ago.

Give state Sen. Patrick Browne, R-Lehigh, credit for persistence. Many people facing an immovable bureaucracy would have given up long ago. But Browne is committed to removing a bloodstain from Pennsylvania's reputation.

For the second time in as many sessions of the Legislature, Browne has introduced a bill that would outlaw pigeon and other live-animal shoots. Similar measures have been introduced every two years or so for more than two decades.

Browne's earlier piece of legislation concerning live-animal shoots actually was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, only to die a quiet, lingering death from inaction by the Senate as a whole.