Writing at the Philadelphia Inquirer, civics reporter Henry Savage laments that “Philadelphia has been unable to pass local gun laws.”
“A predicament that has embroiled the city and the state General Assembly into a years-long battle over one thing: state preemption law,” he complains.
Second Amendment activists recognize state preemption laws as one of the most effective roadblocks to local anti-gun politicians determined to discourage law-abiding citizens from exercising their right to keep and bear arms, as well as their right of self-defense.
Far-left gun prohibitionists whose policies are often to blame for the violent crime they fear, and who reflexively blame firearms and the rights of people who own them, have been fighting such laws for decades, without much success. They scored a small victory in Colorado last year when the legislature repealed its preemption statute, but other states have not followed.
Anti-gun Seattle, Washington Mayor Bruce Harrell earlier this year launched a fight to get preemption repealed in the Evergreen State, but he made the mistake of declaring the Washington statute was one of a few in the country.
Not so, replied Alan Gottlieb at the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Gottlieb’s statement was picked up by Ammoland News. According to Gottlieb, state preemption statutes are common sense because they assure gun law uniformity from one state border to the other. More than 40 states have enacted such laws. Washington’s law dates back to 1983 and 1985.
In his article, Savage notes, “Leaders like Mayor Jim Kenney tried to pass local laws — like the executive order to ban all firearms and deadly weapons from Parks and Recreation facilities — but they were deemed unenforceable, as they have in all of their attempts to impose gun control measures in the city both this year and past years.”
Preemption laws are a barrier to the creation of legal checkerboards, where there are conflicting and even contradictory laws and regulations regarding firearms. Savage also reports that Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and other communities dislike preemption because it has prevented them from passing such laws.
Back in May, Seattle’s KCPQ—the local Fox affiliate—reported on the preemption dispute in Washington. At that time, Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy for the Giffords Law Center, asserted preemption is “a tactic of the gun lobby to prevent municipalities from protecting their own citizens.”
At the time, the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association had just won a unanimous state Supreme Court ruling against the City of Edmonds, which had attempted to adopt its own gun control ordinance requiring so-called “safe storage” of firearms. A similar case is still active against the City of Seattle, but because the state high court upheld the law in the Edmonds case, the Seattle action is essentially moot.
