Here’s the biggest takeaway from Tuesday’s gun control debates in the Pennsylvania Legislature:

After taking action on a series of bills that are mostly tough-on-crime or double down on existing law giving the state supremacy in writing gun laws in Pennsylvania, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rob Kauffman said his panel is done with gun issues in the 2019-20 legislative session.

“We don’t have any intention of addressing further gun control measures this session," Kauffman said.

That’s a big barrier for lawmakers in the House and Senate who are trying to shepherd through bills establishing a new civil court procedure for emergency seizure of guns from persons for whom friends, family or law enforcement have documented mental / emotional health concerns.

Kauffman made a special point about that.

“We will not be considering ‘red flag’ in the House Judiciary Committee so long as Chairman Kauffman is chairman," the Franklin County Republican said, noting he has serious concerns about the fairness of such provisions to gun owners.

Elaborating later, he said, “if the Senate sends us some good legislation we could consider it. But I wouldn’t anticipate red flag being part of that.”

Kauffman’s word is not final, but it would be very difficult for legislation on guns — even bills that have passed the state Senate — to get final passage votes in the House if the chairman there refuses to bring them up.

Kauffman’s declaration, coming to reporters after the meeting gaveled out, brought immediate condemnation from Rep. Tim Briggs, D-Montgomery County and the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

“We have bills that we’ve been working on — the extreme risk protection order, universal background checks, lost and stolen reporting, safe storage bills — that would protect peoples’ lives... and they’re ready to go,” Briggs said.

“I think today was just about political cover (for the majority Republicans) to say: ‘We did a very robust day of gun-related bills.' But they’re not gun safety. We really need to tackle this broadly, and protect peoples’ lives."

House Republicans on the committee did take votes Tuesday on a series of topics that have safely passed with heavy GOP support and the pro-gun lobby’s consent in the past, including some that have been undone through legal challenges.

They included:

An effort to reinstate five-year mandatory minimum sentences for convictions on violent crimes committed with guns.

Reinstatement of statutory language that make cities and towns that pass gun laws that are more restrictive than state law liable for legal fees of any gun owners or gun owners’ organizations like the National Rifle Association that challenges those ordinances in court.

Both of those brought some debate.

“We are a diverse Commonwealth. We have different needs. We have different perspectives. And we have different solutions and strategies based on our communities,” said Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat from Philadelphia, said in opposition to the municipal pre-emption bill.

Philadelphia, in recent times, has been one of the centers of gun crime in Pennsylvania.

Stiffer gun laws have been enacted by many of the state’s larger cities, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, but they have rarely been successfully enforced because of the state’s primacy — recently reinforced by appellate courts — on gun laws.

“What works in Philly make not work in Perry County... but we should have the flexibility to allow our local electeds to decide what policy is best to serve the interests of those folks who are most affected” by gun violence, Rabb said.

The so-called pre-emption bill, proposed by Rep. Mark Keller, R-Perry County, seeks to discourage such place-by-place policy-making by holding the local governments who do it liable for court costs and attorney fees.

Keller’s bill passed on a 14-11, mostly party-line vote, with Rep. Todd Stephens, R-Montgomery County, joining the committee’s ten Democrats in opposition.

The other debate Tuesday came on Stephens’ effort to reinstate the state’s five-year mandatory minimum sentences for criminal convictions of violent crimes like rape, robbery and murder, when the defendant has used a gun.

Past laws were rubbed out by a 2015 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that found the statute required trial judges, instead of jurors, to make several key findings of fact. Stephens’ new version of the bill seeks to fix that problem.

Opponents of the bill argued mandatory minimums fly in the face of current criminal justice reform efforts, and they are disproportionately applied by prosecutors to African-Americans and other minorities.

Stephens said he’d be willing to address the latter concern by eliminating the prosecutors’ discretion to seek the mandatory minimums and make them apply automatically to all gun-crime defendants, but he was adamant that the policy will make Pennsylvanians safer.

He argued that should matter greatly to minority groups as well, noting that 63 percent of all murder-by-gunshot victims from 2013 through 2017 were non-white.

While crime rates fluctuate from year to year, Uniform Crime Report statistics since 1960 do show a general downward trend in the number of violent crimes committed statewide since hitting a peak in 1996 at 57,905.

In 2017, the most recent year for which statewide figures are available, violent crimes totalled 40,019.

It’s hard to tie that drop directly to mandatory minimums: The most recent numbers aren’t so different from 1982 — the year the state legislature adopted the first mandatory minimums here for violent crimes. In that year, there were 42,767 violent crimes reported in Pennsylvania.

But Stephens and other supporters were adamant Tuesday that mandatory minimums are a help in fighting crime by taking the most-violent criminals off the street.

“There is no question that incapacitation works,” Stephens said. “There aren’t too many gun crimes committed in our state prisons. So while an individual who has already committed a violent crime or felony goes to state prison, the rest of us are safer for it.”

Stephens’ bill passed on a 17-8 vote with Democrats Ryan Bizzarro, D-Erie County, Tina Davis, D-Bucks County, and Gerald Mullery, D-Luzerne County, joining 14 Republicans in support, and Rep. Paul Schemel, R-Franklin County, joining seven Democrats in opposition.

Kauffman also got a bill passed Tuesday that would shorten the timeline for a person coming out of an involuntary mental health commitment to surrender their guns to police or another third party - already required - from 60 days to 48 hours.

The House chairman pronounced the package voted Tuesday, all of which now moves to the full House for floor consideration, a balanced package.

"We recognized law-abiding citizens and their right to bear arms in the Commonwealth and enhanced that, but we also addressed criminals, those who would harm someone else... and how they would not be able to have a gun,” Kauffman said.

But it was Kauffman’s pledge to close the door on further steps — including the “red flag” bills that permit gun seizures at the start of a perceived crisis, with court approval — that drew the most notice Tuesday.

It also pointed up, once again, the divide between the Republican majorities’ approach to the issue and what advocates say is growing public support for reforms.

Gov. Tom Wolf, an avowed gun control supporter, declared himself “extremely frustrated" at what he called Kauffman’s “blockade” of additional gun safety bills, and he pledged to veto the bill aimed at discouraging cities and towns from taking steps on their own.

“We should be taking action to improve gun safety and reduce gun violence, not going in the opposite direction," Wolf said. "Today’s committee meeting was disheartening but I will continue to fight for safer communities.”

As Kauffman’s declaration came down, the Senate Judiciary Committee was holding the first of two days of hearings on a broad range of issues touching on gun crime, with a heavy emphasis on improving treatment for those prone to mental health issues.

Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Luzerne County and the Judiciary Committee chair there, said Tuesday she’s not ready to foreclose discussion of any topic at this point. “I haven’t landed specifically on a plan,” Baker said, noting she wants to complete her hearings first.

“I prefer to at least keep the door open to conversation, and I hope that we can do that,” Baker said.