State Preemption Laws Hold Anti-Gunners In Check…For Now

Mentioned prominently in the second paragraph of a report in the Altoona, Pennsylvania Mirror about gun control in the Keystone State is the notation that 42 states have what is commonly known as a firearms preemption statute.

Such laws, which place sole authority for firearms regulations in the hands of state legislatures, are the most important roadblock to anti-gun local governments; blue cities in otherwise red or purple states. Possibly the best example of how local politicians dislike preemption laws is Seattle, Washington, where a string of liberal mayors including current Mayor Bruce Harrell, have lobbied the legislature to repeal the law. Not long after Harrell took office in early 2022, he complained that Washington was “one of a few” states with such statutes. He was immediately—and publicly—corrected by Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

“Harrell and other anti-gunners would have us roll back the calendar to a time when a literal state of confusion existed in Washington,” Gottlieb said at the time. “Before preemption was wisely adopted by the State Legislature, we had a checkerboard of often conflicting local gun regulations. State lawmakers properly took control of this mess and cleaned it up with a single set of regulations that apply equally from the Canada border to the Columbia River.”

The same situation applies to Pennsylvania, and every other state where preemption laws provide uniformity from one state border to the other.

The Altoona Mirror was reporting how the state Supreme Court had recently “dealt a blow to Philadelphia and other municipalities’ efforts to pass stricter gun laws” by upholding the preemption law. That decision will not prevent gun control advocates from continuing their crusade to pass restrictive gun laws.

It’s the same way across most states with preemption statutes. Three years ago, the Democrat-controlled Colorado Legislature repealed that state’s law in reaction to a mass shooting in Boulder only two weeks after that city’s effort to ban so-called “assault weapons” was derailed by the statute.

As reported by Governing.com, however, “the city’s assault weapons ban likely would not have stopped this latest mass shooting.”

Therein, says the firearms community, is the problem with gun control proponents. They believe adopting increasingly restrictive laws will prevent violent criminals from committing violent crimes. History has demonstrated repeatedly the fallacy of that belief.

As Governing.com explained, “Only California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nebraska,* New Jersey and New York — and now Colorado — allow local governments to pass gun ordinances that are tighter than state restrictions. Some Democratic lawmakers in the other 42 states, frustrated by inaction, are considering whether to follow Colorado and overturn their preemption laws.”

(*However, according to a note at Wikipedia regarding Nebraska gun laws, the Cornhusker State adopted a preemption law which took effect Sept. 2, 2023. This is confirmed at handgunlaw.us, a website with up-to-date information on gun laws in all 50 states.)

State preemption has become the new battleground for Democrats who want to restore what CCRKBA’s Gottlieb described as “a literal state of confusion” in which “a checkerboard of often conflicting local gun regulations” made it difficult for law-abiding gun owners to obey the law, and often caused them grief.

Typically, proponents of local control couch their advocacy as a concern for public safety. In Pennsylvania, the Mirror report notes, Democrat State Rep. Tim Briggs expressed disappointment at his state high court’s ruling on preemption.

“Now it’s up to the legislature to keep up the fight and once again advance real gun violence prevention measures supported by a vast majority of Pennsylvanians and deliver results meeting constitutional muster,” he told one newspaper.

But does local control translate to “gun violence prevention?” Not according to recent history in Seattle, where Mayor Harrell must know how violent crime has risen dramatically since he and other members of the City Council back in July 2015 hastily adopted a special tax on the retail sale of firearms and ammunition. The tax was subsequently upheld by the state Supreme Court, but did it accomplish anything? The answer is a resounding “No.”

According to Seattle Police Department (SPD) data, in 2016—the first year the gun tax was in effect—the Jet City reported 20 homicides. In 2023, Seattle logged a record number of slayings, although there is some disagreement on the number. The Seattle Times in January reported 69 homicides in 2023, but noted at the time, “Seattle police, however, have put 2023’s count at 73, a number that includes the discovery of a human skull in Rainier Beach, the death of an unborn baby who died after a pregnant woman was fatally shot in Belltown and the delayed deaths of two men, one who was shot in 2021 and a second who was stabbed last year.”

However, Seattle Homicide, an independent site on “X” (formerly Twitter) not connected to the SPD, says there were 74 slayings in the city in 2023.

Whatever the number, it is literally three times the number of killings in 2016, which translates to a failure of a local gun control law, and an example of how wrong anti-preemption efforts can be.

There is more. When Seattle adopted the tax, revenue estimates ran as high as $300,000 to $500,000 annually. In actuality, the number has never come close. TGM has tracked the actual revenue since winning a lawsuit against the city under the Public Records Act to disclose the revenue data. The most the city ever collected was in 2020, for $184,836. Last year, then city collected $113,021.

Where the city succeeded was in driving gun and ammunition sales outside of the city. It was, perhaps, a moral victory of sorts, but criminals are still getting guns and ammunition and people are still being murdered.

According to SPD data, there have been 621 “shots fired” reports so far this year including 28 gun-related homicides. Last year, 619 shots fired reports were filed, including 41 fatalities. In 2022, the city logged 647 shots fired reports for the entire year, including 36 slayings. By comparison, in 2016, there were 283 shots fired reports, and only nine homicides involving firearms, according to SPD data.—Dave Workman