Ohio Supreme Court upholds law blocking city gun bans

COLUMBUS, Ohio | Wed Dec 29, 2010 1:15pm EST

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld as constitutional a state law that prevents Cleveland and other cities from passing restrictive gun laws.

In a 5-2 decision, the court found that the 2006 law does not infringe on the "home rule" powers of Ohio cities.

The court ruled that the state statute "is a general law that displaces municipal firearm ordinances and does not unconstitutionally infringe on municipal home rule authority."

The ruling overturns a lower court decision. Gun control advocates were critical of the decision and tied it to campaigns by the National Rifle Association, a powerful national lobbying group against gun control.

"This is part of an NRA effort to get guns into more places and to take away the power of local citizens to decide what their gun laws will be," said Daniel Vice, senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

Asked if the Ohio decision would be appealed to a higher court like the U.S. Supreme Court, Vice said that he needed to study the decision, including part of the ruling which directed the lower court to review the city of Cleveland's position.

Before Ohio passed the law, Cleveland had a number of ordinances regulating guns, including requiring firearms to be registered and forbidding anyone from openly carrying a gun.

The city had argued before the Ohio Supreme Court that the state statute infringed on its home rule powers and was an abuse of legislative power.

(Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Jerry Norton and Peter Bohan)
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Comments (2)
Evo1 wrote:
These people (the anti-gun lobby nuts) are pathetic. Now they’re crying “local rule!”, even though for years they tried as hard as they could to subvert it. But they’ve lost their attempt to force federal gun controls on us, so now they’re trying to say those losses shouldn’t affect local laws (even though their goal was always to have those local laws overturned when they won). Never mind that even if their claims about the NRA are true, the only reason that the NRA is so powerful is because it is supported by a far larger number of citizens than all the anti-gun lobbying groups combined. So basically all they’re whining about is that the voters don’t support their misguided agenda.

Also, their lawyer must be an idiot. He can’t appeal this to the US Supreme Court, because there is no federal issue involved. He should know that. This is a state law affecting only in-state issues. The US Supreme Court has no jurisdiction in this case, since it is solely a state constitutional issue. The state supreme court was the ultimate authority, and they’ve ruled. Game over – you lose.

Dec 30, 2010 11:40am EST  --  Report as abuse
grgilmore wrote:
EVO1. This will wind up in the US Supreme Court.

Dec 31, 2010 11:48am EST  --  Report as abuse
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