PHILADELPHIA - The state Supreme Court has rejected calls from plaintiffs who feel Pennsylvania cities should be able to implement their own gun control laws.
The justices on Nov. 20 affirmed a Commonwealth Court ruling that said only the state can pass laws to curb gun violence. Various cities in the state have tried to pass their own legislation but they have been rejected by courts.
The plaintiffs, who include individuals and the City of Philadelphia, claim the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act of 1995 and the Home Rule Charter, which together prohibit localities from enacting gun control laws, are unconstitutional or unlawful.
"Case law abounds with instances in which local and state government have disputed their respective authority to act in a given area," Justice Kevin Brobson wrote.
"As the instant matter makes clear, this power struggle has been at play in the specific realm of firearms regulation for decades."
One of those was a 1996 decision called Ortiz - a case that challenged the UFA's preemption provision that prevented local governments from regulating lawful ownership of firearms and ammunition.
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had banned assault weapons but the Supreme Court struck them as violating the Home Rule Charter. It prevents home rule municipalities from performing any power denied by the General Assembly.
The Nov. 20 decision didn't decide whether a local ordinance was lawful. Instead, the justices were asked to declare the laws preventing local ordinances are unlawful.
Plaintiffs say if not for these laws, cities would enact measures like purchase limits. They cited data that shows those types of laws reduce the risk of gun violence.
Firearm preemption laws (FPLs) are depriving Pennsylvanians the right to enjoy and defend life, the plaintiffs said. Their lawsuit named the General Assembly and leaders within it as defendants.
"We emphasize... that it is undisputedly private actors and not (Defendants) who are alleged to be directly committing the acts of gun violence at issue and that (Plaintiffs) are purportedly not seeking recognition of a right to governmental protection against those private acts of gun violence," Brobson wrote.
Plaintiffs are asking for the right to self-defense through means of local legislation, he added.
"Simply put, (Plaintiffs) provide no basis upon which to conclude that the right to 'defend life and liberty'... is so broad as to encompass such a right."
The suit also claimed the FPLs are essentially a state-created danger. It failed the first prong of such a test, which requires the harm ultimately caused to be "foreseeable and fairly direct."
"(Plaintiffs) have failed to aver sufficiently that (Defendants') actions 'precipitated or [were] the catalyst' for the private acts of gun violence," Brobson wrote.