Finally some legislative action in Pennsylvania vs. pigeon shoots

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
HARRISBURG–The Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee on
April 12, 2011 voted 11-3 to send a bill to ban pigeon shoots to the
full state senate for consideration.
The passage of a state bill from committee to legislative
consideration rarely attracts national notice, but the action on SB
626, introduced by state senator Patrick Browne, caused the
National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legis-lative Action to
issue a membership alert contending that SB 626 is about “banning all
hunting.”

“Pennsylvania holds the dishonor of being the last place
where such cruel spectacles [as pigeon shoots] are regularly and
openly allowed,” editorialized WHP-TV of Harrisburg.
Bills to stop pigeon shooting had been stalled in committee
for 11 years. SB 626 drew the support of six Republicans and five
Democrats, opposed by three Republicans. SB 626 is endorsed by the
Pennsylvania Council of Churches, the Pennsylvania Veterinary
Medical Association, and the Pennsylvania Bar Association, as well
as by animal advocates.
Awareness that pigeon shooting continues in Pennsylvania has
been amplified during the past year by the Chicago-based organization
Showing Animals Respect & Kindness, which in early 2010 was given $1
million by Bob Barker, the retired host of The Price Is Right, to
fund the campaign.
SHARK efforts to videotape pigeon shoots have been met with
violence on several occasions. Robert M. Boyd, 47, of Ringoes,
New Jersey, was cited for summary harassment after allegedly
reaching into the SHARK vehicle on April 17, 2011 to try to prevent
SHARK activist Janet Enoch from videotaping him as he left a pigeon
shoot held at the Wing Pointe Gun Club near Shoemakersville. On the
same day SHARK founder Steve Hindi suffered a bloodied head when
allegedly whipped with a dog leash by an unidentified assailant.
Robert Olsen, 61, of Warminster, Penn-sylvania, received two
summary citations for an incident on February 22, 2011 in which
Enoch videotaped him in the act of pointing a handgun at Hindi.
A SHARK Octocopter drone video camera platform remains
snagged in a tall tree near Wing Pointe, after allegedly being shot
down on January 2, 2011. The drone transmitted sound and video of
the shots allegedly fired at it before crashing into the tree.
Hindi founded SHARK in 1992. SHARK campaigns ended pigeon
shooting in Illinois later that year, and helped to end the oldest
and largest pigeon shoot in the U.S., held at Hegins, Pennsylvania
from 1935 to 1999.