The same grim story appears in the news day after day.

Walter M. Phillips Jr. is chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (walphillip@state.pa.us).

Five Duquesne U. basketball players shot on campus (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 18).

An 18-year-old Allentown man who dreamed of one day becoming a funeral director was shot and killed early Sunday outside a downtown after-hours club, authorities said (Allentown Morning Call, Sept. 11).

A Franklin & Marshall College student was shot and critically injured during an armed robbery early this morning (Lancaster New Era, Sept. 9).

A 27-year-old mother of two and wife of an Iraq war veteran was sitting on the steps of her South Philadelphia row house when she was hit in the chest by a stray bullet Saturday night. She died 25 minutes later (Philadelphia Inquirer, July 6).

Twenty-one hours. Six people wounded in three shooting incidents in Homewood. Two of them children, 3 and 4 years old (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 19).

Handgun violence is epidemic in Pennsylvania -- and not just in big cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. People also are dying in Aliquippa and Erie and Altoona and Williamsport and Harrisburg and Lancaster and York.

This is tragic -- and intolerable.

Pennsylvania legislators apparently agree. The state House of Representatives will hold a special session to address violence in the state on Sept. 26, the day after they return to Harrisburg for the fall session.

Clearly, social and economic measures are needed to deal with the growing problem of handgun violence, but first and foremost, we need stronger laws to reduce the availability of handguns to those who would use them, not for hunting or protection, but to threaten and kill others. We especially need to stop straw purchasers -- individuals who legally buy handguns, then sell or give them to people who cannot legally purchase them, usually because they have a criminal record.

Straw purchasers are the plague of Pennsylvania. Guns illegally obtained in our state are killing children from Maine to Michigan. Our weak laws don't just allow this, they invite it.

While no one knows for certain what percentage of handguns used in crimes are straw-purchased, law enforcement officials say the number is large and growing. In fact, indications are that the gun used to kill a Reading police officer last month was obtained through a straw purchase.

Mayors of large cities along the East Coast, including Michael Bloomberg of New York City, point to Pennsylvania as a key source of handguns used in their communities.

A case in point: The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced 91 crime guns used in Camden in 2003 and 2004 to Pennsylvania, whereas only 35 originated in New Jersey, a state with restrictive gun laws.

It is outrageous that in Pennsylvania a citizen can go into a gun shop on his lunch hour, undergo a two-minute background check, walk out of the store with as many handguns as he wants, and still have time for a burger.

Thanks to masterful lobbying against reasonable gun laws, the National Rifle Association and other sportsmen's organizations have made clear that any legislator who stands up to the powerful gun lobby likely won't be a legislator for long.

As a result, meaningful legislation that truly could reduce gun violence in Pennsylvania has been bottled up in committees in Harrisburg for years.

One of the most important bills is known as One Handgun a Month. As the name implies, this legislation would limit handgun purchases -- not rifle or shotgun purchases -- to just one a month.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which tracked the effects of limiting handgun purchases, One Handgun a Month legislation effectively disrupts the illegal transfer of handguns.

Several states, including Virginia, a state much like Pennsylvania with a strong gun heritage, have passed such a law and reduced the number of straw purchases.

Pro-gun lobbyists argue that One Handgun a Month infringes upon a citizen's Second Amendment right to bear arms. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled years ago that the Second Amendment applies to state militias, not individual citizens. Americans have the right to own handguns, just as they can own homes or cars, but it is not a constitutional right.

Under One Handgun a Month, law-abiding citizens still could purchase 12 handguns a year. Is that not enough to protect one's home and family?

Pro-gun groups also suggest that the solution to gun violence is stiffer sentences for those who commit crimes with handguns and those who illegally sell them.

Harsh punishment is necessary for gun offenders, but mandatory minimum sentences are not, and never have been, a significant deterrent to criminal behavior. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, for instance, have not curbed the flow of drugs onto our streets.

Regardless of whether one supports or opposes handgun control, One Handgun a Month strikes a reasonable balance between the right to own a handgun and the right to live safely in a community.

It just makes sense.