The state Commonwealth Court today struck down one City Council effort to enact local gun laws.
Council members Darrell Clarke and Donna Reed Miller filed a lawsuit last fall citing a "state-created danger" after several local gun-control laws were passed but not enforced because the General Assembly had not voted on corresponding state legislation.
Clarke and Miller asked a panel of judges to rule that the state's Uniform Firearm Act does not preempt the city's own gun laws, and to force the General Assembly to accept that legislation.
But in a ruling released today, the Commonwealth Court did just the opposite. The judges said that the Act does preempt local legislation.
“While we understand the terrible problems gun violence poses for the city and sympathize with its efforts to use police powers to create a safe environment for its citizens, these practical considerations do not alter the clear preemption imposed by the legislature, nor our Supreme Court’s validation of the legislature’s power to act,” the ruling said.
For the complete ruling, click here. The decision will most likely be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
The laws passed last fall would limit purchases of handguns to one a month, require gun owners to report lost or stolen guns to police, require a police-issued annual license to bring a gun into the city, allow police to confiscate guns from people considered a risk to themselves or others, ban semiautomatic weapons with clips that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and establish a registry of ammunition sales.
Clarke re-submitted the legislation in January, without the language requiring state authorization.
Nutter signed the five laws and was promptly challenged in court by the NRA. A Common Pleas judge ruled in June that he could not enforce two of them – the assault weapons ban and the one-gun-a-month provision. The city and the NRA have appealed the ruling.
UPDATE: We just spoke to Mayor Nutter, who said he was still reviewing the ruling but was disappointed by the decision. He said it was particularly difficult because Philadelphia Police Officer Patrick McDonald was shot and killed in the line of duty this week."From a sheer timing standpoint, given the events of this week and the events of a couple weeks ago...it is just troubling why we continue to go through this," Nutter said. "There must be further action in Harrisburg in regard to gun legislation."
Posted by Catherine Lucey @ 11:18 AM
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28 comments
gun laws? what thug follows the law to get a gun? they get them illegally folks..enacting more gun laws won't stop this. what a bunch of jokes these people are.
why not use the current gun laws to disarm the felons?
because that would be racial profiling and you don't want to offend the black vote.
at some point in the gun purchasing process, one must acquire it legally (guns don't exactly fall off the back of trucks). the whole concept of "only law abiding citizens follow the rule to purchase guns and thugs will do anything to get them" doesn't always hold true. the concept of straw purchases is one failure of the current legislature involving gun purchases.
Uh...yeah. We've known this was coming for a long time. It's time for Philadelphia to stop acting like a child, and enforce the laws currently on the books. Sorry cops, that means you can't take a coffee break every hour.
There are only two gun dealers left in Philadelphia. Passing these laws will put both out of business, meanwhile criminals will go on getting their guns from their old sources. Did't this last one come from South Carolina? Gun laws have a problem - criminals don't obey them.
City Council is a joke wasting their taxpayer money on illigetimate claims and lawsuits. Criminals doet obey gun laws and all gun laws do is take guns out of law abiding citizens. Approve the Castle Doctrine in Harrisburg and take back the streets.
Straw purchases are already illegal -- go after them with current laws. The laws that Nutter and crew want to enact would only restrict those who want to own and carry weapons legally. I've read the state law, and am well versed in it since I plan on offering a challenge to a similar township rule. It specifically states that "No county, municipality or township may in any manner regulate the lawful ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of firearms, ammunition or ammunition components when carried or transported for purposes not prohibited by the laws of this Commonwealth.". Simply put, nobody but the state can make gun laws. So Philly, just use the laws on the books and get the criminals off the streets -- leave the law abiding people alone.
The problem is not that police are not arresting gun criminals. The problem is that judges and the Board of Probation and Parole just let them out. They let them plead to lesser sentences to get charges dropped, when if prosecuted for all of the charges, the criminal would have long hard time that means something. Ten years for someone who is a serial violent offender is just irresponsible, but that is the result of having gun laws you can plead out of. That's where mandatory minimums need to be longer. We have like 6,000 waiting instances of ballistics evidence, also, that have to be processed, so that is also another example of gun laws in effect that are just not funded or enforced properly.
"Criminals who use guns during the commission of crime are a
direct and imminent danger to our communities. The federal gun
laws have substantial penalties which include mandatory minimum
sentencing. Thus, the Philadelphia Police Department will work with
the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the ATF to substantially increase the
number of gun cases prosecuted at the federal level. The current
ballistic backlog is unacceptable. As previously mentioned, there
prosecute gun cases efficiently. Therefore, we will take immediate
steps to are 6,000 pieces of ballistic evidence waiting to be tested.
This impedes the Department’s ability to identify offenders and
reduce this backlog which may include outsourcing ballistic
analyses to agencies such as independent contractors and the
Pennsylvania State Police." This is something the press can do to get gun crime down now, follow up on the PPD's crime fighting strategy on guns, from http://www.ppdonline.org/pdf/hq/Crime%20Plan%20Final%201-29-08%20v2.pdf. For example, why isn't the mayor funding the processing of this ballistics evidence if need be? We can't prosecute the gun laws we have now with this backlog. We can't use VUFA at the federal level to prosecute gun crimes if we are not doing our part to get that info to them.
The whole point of having more gun laws is to have more charges to the hoodlums that get caught. Judges that are so easy on sentences would be forced to add more time for each charge the criminal is guilty of. More laws = more charges = more jail time.
Do you know the record for the judge YOU voted for?
We have to stop electing judges in Philly. Obviously, the judges get their elections fixed by "generous" benefactors involved in the drug trade. The influence in Philly reached all the way Street admin. Are we surprised the Philly judges are so pro-criminal?
Clarke and Miller preside in City Council of some of the worst drug neighborhoods in the city. Why not collect the overdue property taxes in those zip codes to pay for processing the ballistics backlog? See http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/delinqbyzip/index_html?skey=pcent&rkey=pcent to view city data of the percent of all owners who owe by zip code. Some of those professing this anti-gun sentiment in fact have districts where unpaid property taxes are allowed to languish, unused, for prosecuting the gun laws that now exist.
One clear way to diminish gun crime is go after the gun criminals wanted on violent warrants. There are 30,000 people wanted on violent offenses in Philly. How about let's use the $568 million in uncollected property taxes, some of it, to go after them? That is, if you are really about decreasing gun crime today, and not after some quixotic quest. Here's the city data that shows the "paycheck" the city has waiting to be cashed: http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/summary
The fatal flaw in that theory is that firearms charges are usually the first ones thrown out. The prosecutor of Daniel Giddings threw out illegal weapons charges against him in 2000. See here: http://ujsportal.pacourts.us/DocketSheets/CPReport.aspx?matterID=103930689 (Note that Nolle Prosse is defined as "Will not prosecute". See here: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Nolle+prossed
The most digusting part of all this is how Nutter and city council openly and intentionally broke state law. For this reason, they need to be prosecuted for their crimes.
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