The Democratic-dominated Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the state's preemptive gun control law would invalidate Philadelphia's attempt to enact and enforce stricter gun laws than the state already has in place. The judgment was made.
A “unique” approach
The city tried a unique approach. The party argued that the state's pre-emption law violates the state's constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense, without question from the state. Try to convince the high court that the court blocked city officials from enacting stricter gun control laws, which they knew were necessary to reduce gun violence in the city, to protect that right. And so.
Attorney Joshua Prince, one of the state's lead attorneys, wrote: “There's no way you could make something like this up!”
The High Court dealt with three issues, all of which revolved around new and untested legal theories.
Whether Philadelphia violated the state constitution's “guarantee of the right of all Pennsylvanians to the enjoyment and protection of life and liberty” by prohibiting the enactment of stricter gun control laws. Whether the state's preemptive law, which prevented the city from enacting stricter laws, created a “state-created danger” that violated the state constitution. By requiring cities to protect their citizens from gun violence and then restricting cities' responses, the state created a “public health threat” similar to gun violence.
After discussing the impossible interpretation, the high court wrote:
To the extent that appellants' arguments in this regard (the City's innovative arguments) assert a constitutional right to immunity from death and injury from private gun violence created and amplified by the state, we expresses such a view. They claim that they cannot decipher claims of state-created danger, but we will grapple with and ultimately reject this….
The city was recognized for its innovative but empty and ultimately unconvincing arguments.
Here, appellants argue that Article 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution designates the individual right to “defend life and liberty” not merely as a collective right, but as a collective right to protect oneself from acts of private gun violence. We are seeking an interpretation of paragraph 1. , especially by local laws.
In short, the appellants provide no basis for concluding that the right to “protect life and liberty” provided for in Article 1(1) is broad enough to encompass such a right. Not yet.
Instead, appellants paint themselves in overly broad strokes, relying on general constitutional principles and combining judgments and concepts gleaned from inadequate case law and secondary sources to support their position. It depicts our discussion…
In short, despite the appellants' efforts to shed light on the “right of collective self-defense through local ordinances,” which is said to be provided for in Article 1, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, the generalized constitutional Merely advocating principles will not produce any results. provide sufficient basis for us to conclude that such rights exist;
Because the appellants have not identified the rights protected by Article 1(1) that the appellants have violated in order to engage in substantive due process, their first cause of action is necessarily fails as a legal matter.
The court dismissed the second and third claims for the same reasons. There is no logical interpretation that state preemption laws prevent cities like Philadelphia from enacting stricter gun control laws.
huge impact
The impact of this judgment is enormous. More than 40 states have similar preemption laws. If Pennsylvania's high court accepted Philadelphia's argument, gun regulators would immediately cite the ruling to try to overturn anti-preemption laws in other places.
