HARRISBURG -- A gubernatorial advisory panel yesterday recommended tougher penalties for people who violate Pennsylvania's gun laws but declined to endorse a one-a-month limit on handgun purchases that Gov. Ed Rendell embraced during his 2002 election campaign.

The Commission to Address Gun Violence also stopped short of recommending the elimination of a state law that bars cities and towns from enacting their own gun ordinances.

Philadelphia Mayor John Street says the law has stymied efforts by the state's largest city to curb the gun violence that has grown rampant this year. The city's ballot in yesterday's primary election featured a referendum question calling on Rendell and the Legislature to allow Philadelphia to enact its own gun ordinances.

Walter M. Phillips Jr., the Philadelphia lawyer who chairs the panel, said he believed that a majority of the commission members would have endorsed both proposals, but that votes were not taken on them at the recommendation of a subcommittee that included the four legislators on the panel.

"These are sensitive issues, and there was not a consensus," he said.

Diane Edbril, a leader of CeaseFirePA, a gun-control advocacy group that had pressed the commission to endorse both proposals, called the decision "a shame" and criticized the Legislature for "passing the buck on this for years."

"We're just doing a dance in place," she said, "and meanwhile blood is flowing."

Rendell, a Democrat who appointed the commission in response to a spate of deadly shootings in Philadelphia and York, endorsed the one-handgun-per-month proposal while campaigning in 2002, but he has never asked the Republican-controlled Legislature to approve it. His spokeswoman has said he is convinced that opposition to new gun controls would render the proposal dead on arrival.

Pennsylvania does not limit the number of handguns that someone may buy. Critics say that enables illegal traffickers to acquire large numbers of guns through middlemen who buy them legally.

The commission did recommend that lawmakers study the one-handgun plan and the state's pre-emption of local gun ordinances, Phillips said.

The panel also called for longer prison sentences for the "most egregious gun offenders," and better tracking of firearms and better data-sharing among federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies, according to a summary of its report.