Pennsylvania County Wants To Make Its Own Gun Laws After Recent Court Defeat

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, PA — Officials in this western Pennsylvania county are asking the General Assembly to amend state law and allow municipalities the ability to craft their own gun laws, the move coming soon after an appeals court struck down gun ordinances that were passed by the City of Pittsburg because they were deemed to be illegal.

During a meeting this week, the county council passed a motion that urges state legislators to amend the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act to allow individual towns, cities and counties to pass their own gun laws, according to an article on 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh's NPR news station.

Under Pennsylvania's current preemption statute, only the state General Assembly can regulate guns, even though individual municipalities have tried to do so on and off for years, with those ordinances often getting struck down by the courts.

Pittsburgh's most recent defeat came late last month when the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court struck down gun laws passed by Pittsburgh following a synagogue shooting back in 2019.

Related: Pittsburgh's Gun Ordinances Struck Down In Court Again

The appeals court ruling sided with a trial court judge who had also previously struck down Pittsburgh's gun ordinances.

Both the trial court and the appeals judges cited state Supreme Court precedence, which in turn had cited the preemption statute, as the reason for striking down the local ordinances.

Many states have what are known as 'preemption' statutes, which give sole authority for legislation to the General Assembly.

The argument in favor of keeping preemption is typically that there would be concern of otherwise law-abiding citizens running afoul of a whole patchwork of local gun laws if individual cities and towns across a state were given the ability to craft their own laws.

Because Pennsylvania has a ton of local jurisdictions — there are thousands of individual municipalities throughout the commonwealth — the worry about unknowingly violating conflicting guns laws if one were to be traveling throughout the state with a firearm seems to be legitimate.

Still, there are others who support the idea of allowing local governments to enact their own firearms ordinances.

Those who support repealing preemption and allowing individual cities, towns and counties the ability to make their own gun laws say that local governments often know best on how to keep their communities safe.

Of course, another hurdle to gun laws in general stems from the fact that the Pennsylvania Constitution actually goes further in its "right-to-bear-arms" language than the federal constitution, since, unlike the U.S. Constitution, it makes no mention of the phrase "militias."

Article I, Section 21 of the Pennsylvania Constitution states, "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned."

Whether or not the General Assembly will address Allegheny County's resolution calling for the ability of municipalities to enact their own gun laws remains to be seen.

The chair of the House Judiciary Committee, however, has previously gone on record stating that gun legislation would not be moving out of his committee anytime soon, meaning Allegheny County's resolution is likely to fall on deaf ears.