HARRISBURG — Two sides of the political debate over guns brought their respective cases to the Pennsylvania Capitol on Wednesday, pressing for support among state lawmakers on an issue that’s always present in Harrisburg but has become more prominent since last month’s Connecticut school massacre.

The event, in bitter cold on the Capitol steps, was organized by a Pennsylvania Responsible Citizens and focused on gun protections in the state and national constitutions.

The Second Amendment, said freshman Rep. Tommy Sankey, R-Clearfield, was designed “to keep politicians in their place.”

“If they want our guns, come and try to get them, because it’s not going to happen,” Sankey told a crowd of about 100.

Inside the building about an hour later, some of them were among several hundred who heard people speak about how they have lost loved ones to gun violence, and many of them invoked the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

The rallies were held amid calls for a boycott of the nine-day Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show in Harrisburg next month because organizers banned the sale and display of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.