The St. Paul City Council is currently considering whether to adopt a new gun control ordinance that would ban so-called assault weapons, large capacity magazines, binary triggers, as well as create several new "gun-free zones."
The new laws wouldn't take effect until or unless the state legislature repeals the firearm preemption law that prevents bodies other than the legislature from crafting gun regulations, but MN Gun Owners Law Center Rob Doar says that language doesn't make the ordinances any less illegal, and the law center along with the MN Gun Owners Caucus have vowed to sue St. Paul over the ordinance if the City Council approves the measure.
As we previously reported, Doar contends that it's the state’s "explicit command" that local governments cannot legislate in this area at all.
Minnesota’s preemption statute, Minn. Stat. § 471.633, could not be clearer: “The legislature preempts all authority of a home rule charter or statutory city … to regulate firearms, ammunition, or their respective components.” That is an express prohibition—a denial of authority, not a green light as long as they delay enforcement. So while “trigger laws” reflect a state’s own deferred choice to act under its sovereign power, a preemption statute is the sovereign’s instruction that subordinate units lack that power altogether. When a city enacts an ordinance in a preempted field, it is void from inception—not waiting to be “triggered” by future judicial change.
Enter St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker, who recently offered a bizarre response to the threats of litigation.
“State law is crystal clear — cities don’t have the authority to regulate firearms, no matter how they try to dress it up,” Rob Doar, senior vice president of government affairs at the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said in a statement.
Doar said any ordinance that violates the state preemption law is void.
“A deferred effective date doesn’t make an illegal ordinance legal; it just means taxpayers will end up footing the bill to defend something that can never take effect,” Doar said.
The group called the city’s move “political theater at taxpayer expense,” arguing that the proposal diverts funds from real public safety efforts.
Noecker rejected that characterization, saying public money would only be spent if the ordinance were challenged in court.
“We’ll only have to spend public money defending this if the gun owners sue the city,” Noecker said. “If they want to save taxpayer dollars, they can simply avoid suing us.”
Is Noecker really this stupid? The MN Gun Owners Caucus wasn't formed to safeguard taxpayer dollars. It was created to safeguard the Second Amendment rights of Minnesota residents. It's the City Council's responsibility to be good stewards of the money it collects from residents, and as Doar has made clear, it would be a waste of that money to defend an ordinance that is unenforceable under both its plain text and state statute.
Noecker calls the proposed ordinance a "pressure tactic" aimed at forcing lawmakers to repeal the state's preemption law, and points to more than a dozen other localities that are working with St. Paul to adopt similar ordinances of their own.
“When my kids are standing outside in the cold waiting for me to unlock the car, that’s not symbolic: it’s pressure to act,” Noecker said. “This is something that shows how ready we are. And it is useful, as a pressure tactic, even if it can’t be enacted right away.”
Let's explore this analogy a little more. In this case, Noecker's kids are comparable to local politicians like herself, and the state legislature is the parent with the keys to the car. Lost in Noecker's comparison, though, is why her kids want to be let in to the car. In this analogy, they're asking mom to let them in so they do something that violates the law; maybe taking the car for a spin when none of them have licenses, or drive them to a local liquor store so they can rob it.
Then there's the fact that the pressure tactic Noecker and colleagues like St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter are using is a violation of state law in and of itself. It's more akin to her kids threatening to brain their mom with a brick if she doesn't unlock the car doors, though the doors are locked for good reason; not to keep kids out in the cold, but to prevent them from breaking the law.
In this tortured analogy the kids always have the option of going back inside a warm and cozy house instead of waiting outside in the cold to put pressure on mom to act. The St. Paul City Council has the option of adhering to the state's firearm preemption statute, but Noecker seems intent on picking up a brick and picking a fight that she and the city are almost certain to lose.
