OH Supreme Court Rules for Gun Owners

(Columbus, Ohio) The city of Cleveland has been challenging a state law which specifies that its local laws on gun control are invalid and replaced by the Ohio preemption law, HB347.

The Ohio Supreme Court has now ruled 5-2 that the preemption law is valid.

The legislature recognized that, like motor vehicle laws, it makes sense for firearms laws to be uniform throughout the state. Because local laws can only carry misdemeanor penalties, and almost every crime committed with a gun is a felony under state or federal law, the local laws were almost never used to charge criminals and instead served to disarm the crime victims.

Cleveland's argument against the state law was simple: they felt the state and federal government had not gone far enough to regulate self-defense rights, so the city should still be free to further regulate everyone who happens to be inside city limits.[…]

In Cleveland, gun ordinances have been used for political or philosophical reasons and had the effect of harassing law-abiding citizens.

Gun rights advocates will now seek to have a variety of local ordinances declared unconstitutional. Gun control advocates are presumably puckered by the Supreme Court ruling.