The National Rifle Association needs a boogeyman and Pennsylvania Rep. David Levdansky is it.

That's funny. Mr. Levdansky is a guy who might as well wear an "I'd Rather Be Deer Hunting" bumper sticker on the back of his suit. An avid outdoorsman, Mr. Levdansky, 53, has owned guns from the day he was old enough to do so legally, and he'd much rather spend time walking Penn's Woods than the halls of Harrisburg.

But the NRA doesn't like him because he has proposed a common-sense bill that will make it harder for criminals to get handguns. The proposal is this simple:

Handgun owners who discover that a gun has been lost or stolen will have 72 hours from the point of their discovery to report the theft to police.

What's wrong with that? Why would anyone not report a stolen handgun? The NRA itself would not discourage its members from reporting a lost firearm.

The NRA can't be worried about the penalties Mr. Levdansky has proposed. The first violation would be a summary offense, like a parking ticket. A second violation still would be only a misdemeanor. Only a person irresponsible enough to lose his handgun three different times, and then fail to report any of the losses or thefts, would be charged with a felony.

Felons are prohibited from owning guns, but you'd either have to be Homer Simpson or a regular purchaser of guns from criminals to become a felon under this law. No responsible gun owner should have any concerns with Mr. Levdansky's legislation.

Yet the NRA has lobbied very successfully against his proposal, and he expects them to come after him when he runs for re-election this fall. Why?

"I think it boils down to this," says Mr. Levdansky. "They have these fund-raising banquets.''

He says he attends a couple of NRA banquets each year. He likes the organization's gun safety programs.

"How do you get people to buy tickets? There's got to be a cause, right? There has to be some threat to hunters and gun owners, otherwise you won't part with that money in your wallet.

"The NRA, for fund-raising purposes only, needs a boogeyman to scare their members into writing checks. I guess they've decided I have to be the boogeyman this year. That's kind of strange since I'm one of them."

The representative from Forward doesn't expect his constituents to be fooled by the propaganda. He believes "my Second Amendment right to bear arms also requires individual responsibility in the exercise of that right," and surely one of those responsibilities is reporting a stolen gun.

In a piece Mr. Levdansky wrote May 18 for the Post-Gazette's Forum section, he explained why reporting the theft is important:

"The criminal who can't buy a handgun [because of the instant background check] simply approaches someone on the street who has no felony record -- maybe a crack addict or a hooker. The criminal gives that person money to buy a handgun for him. Later, if that handgun is recovered during a criminal investigation, the original purchaser claims it was stolen. Since no law requires the reporting of stolen handguns, that purchaser can keep selling his guns to shady characters and keep lying about it."

Pittsburgh police recovered 968 firearms in 2007, either at crime scenes or elsewhere, Mr. Levdansky noted. Only 80 of those were reported stolen, and 70 others were registered to the person who was arrested. That leaves 818 guns -- more than two a day -- "confiscated from criminals or found tossed somewhere and the original owner never reported them lost or stolen. That's just in one year in Pittsburgh."

It's the same story, different numbers, in Philadelphia, Erie, Allentown, Williamsport, Johnstown, McKeesport, Duquesne and Clairton.

Rachel Parsons, an NRA spokeswoman, said she was unfamiliar with the particulars of Mr. Levdansky's bill but "regardless, the NRA is very quick to say we shouldn't victimize a victim." Penalizing those who don't report a theft would do that, she said.

If that's the best argument the NRA has, this legislation should pass tomorrow. But so many Pennsylvania lawmakers are afraid of the NRA, this bill seems almost as certain to die as the next person to be shot with a "lost" or "stolen" gun.