As promised, the MN Gun Owners Caucus has sued the city of St. Paul, Minnesota after the City Council on Wednesday adopted a gun control ordinance banning public possession of so-called assault weapons, large capacity magazines, and binary triggers.
For weeks now, the group has been warning politicians across Minnesota that the state's firearm preemption law precludes them from adopting gun control ordinances, even if they contain language that the ordinances won't be enforced until state law allows. Despite the free legal education from MN Gun Owners Law Center president Rob Doar, the St. Paul City Council unanimously approved the ordinance at its Wednesday meeting.
St. Paul City Council members and other officials said they want to put in place local firearm-related ordinances to reduce violence since the Minnesota Legislature and federal lawmakers haven’t taken action, particularly since the Aug. 27 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis that killed two children and injured dozens more.
The St. Paul ordinance says it “is designed to take effect only upon the repeal, amendment, or judicial invalidation of state preemption laws that currently prohibit local regulation of firearms, ensuring legal enforceability while signaling the city’s readiness to act when empowered.”
At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Vice President HwaJeong Kim said, “These measures are the least of what we can do to stop gun violence.”
Passing the ordinance “is not symbolic,” said Council President Rebecca Noecker. “… But it is us showing that we are ready to go.”
No, it's showing you have contempt for the law... just like the violent criminals who would ignore the provisions of this ordinance if it could be enforced right now. Minnesota's firearm preemption statute prohibits localities from adopting their own ordinances, and the statute says nothing about local ordinances being okay so long as they're not enforced until preemption disappears.
In a statement shortly after the MN Gun Owners Caucus filed its lawsuit in Ramsey County District Court, Doar said, "When a city adopts criminal regulations beyond its delegated powers, it not only acts unlawfully but directly harms our members’ rights. The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus made every effort to encourage the Council to comply with state law, but their refusal to do so left us no choice but to seek judicial intervention.”
Caucus chair Bryan Strawser said the ordinance will have a chilling effect on gun owners, regardless of whether the city plans on enforcing it from the get-go.
"It's unfortunate that the City Council and Mayor have chosen to waste taxpayer dollars defending a performative ordinance that clearly violates state law," Strawser added. "We have been clear from the beginning, we will not back down and will always take action to defend the Second Amendment rights of peaceable Minnesotans to keep and bear arms."
City Attorney Lyndsey Olson said the city “is ready to defend our authority to prepare for swift public-safety action — while respecting the rights of responsible gun owners — if state preemption is ever lifted.”
“Contingent ordinances are a common legal tool used in many areas of law, and despite the MN Gun Caucus’s strong rhetoric, they have not been found to violate state firearm preemption law,” she said.
I'm not sure that any contingent ordinances related to firearms have ever been passed in Minnesota before now, so I don't think the courts have ever had the opportunity to rule on whether or not they violate the preemption law. Here's what the statute says:
The legislature preempts all authority of a home rule charter or statutory city including a city of the first class, county, town, municipal corporation, or other governmental subdivision, or any of their instrumentalities, to regulate firearms, ammunition, or their respective components to the complete exclusion of any order, ordinance or regulation by them except that:
(a) a governmental subdivision may regulate the discharge of firearms; and
(b) a governmental subdivision may adopt regulations identical to state law.
Local regulation inconsistent with this section is void.
So, there are two exceptions within the preemption statute, but none of them allow localities to adopt gun control ordinances with contingency provisions.
If St. Paul is hoping to challenge the preemption statute itself, they're not going to have much luck. More than thirty states have similar statutes in place, and they've routinely been upheld by courts in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.
I don't think this is going to end well for St. Paul, or at least the taxpayers who'll ultimately foot the bill for the city council's folly. There are several other municipalities in Minnesota that are considering similar ordinances as a way of putting pressure on the state legislature to adopt gun and magazine bans of its own, so the MN Gun Owners Caucus could be filing more lawsuits in the weeks ahead, and Minnesota gun owners should be reaching out to their own city council members to warn them not to replicate St. Paul's unlawful attempt to impose local restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.
Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points.
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