Cities throughout the country feel stymied. They want to pass gun control laws, but legislators simply won’t let them. Preemption laws prevent local governments from muddying the gun control waters with a patchwork of rules that make it virtually impossible for anyone to keep up with. As a result, a city can’t ban something that would be perfectly legal somewhere else. In preemption states, if you’re familiar with state law, you can travel throughout the state without issue.

Unless you’re in Missouri and have to deal with St. Louis, apparently.

You see, St. Louis has a violence problem and much like other cities, they look to gun control to solve those problems. It won’t work, of course, but St. Louis has a problem. Missouri has preemption.

However, the aldermen of St. Louis got creative to find a way around that preemption.

Aldermen on Friday voted to designate city parks as child care facilities so they’re exempt from a Missouri state law allowing people to carry concealed firearms without permits and training.

The sponsor, Alderman Cara Spencer, D-20th Ward, called the bill “a creative way of pushing the limits of our gun laws.”

“We need to give our police department the tools they need to intervene in situations that are very dangerous and ones that involve our children,” she said. “At the very least our parks should be gun-free zones.”

The bill also asserts that the state child care exemption would bar open carry of guns.

But Alderman Bret Narayan, D-24th Ward, warned that the measure — which passed on a 16-2 vote — is likely to be successfully challenged by gun rights advocates in the courts.

Oh, you’d better believe it would.

Further, this move won’t just trigger lawsuits filed by gun rights activists, either. By designating these parks as child care facilities, the city is accepting responsibility for children at these parks. Every injury is now something the city is going to have to worry about to a far greater degree. After all, where is the staff of this supposed child care facility? Where are the people responsible for making sure little Johnny doesn’t hurt himself on the swing sets?

What, there isn’t one? Yeah, I can’t imagine lawyers in St. Louis aren’t grinning at the opportunity even as we speak.

Honestly, overturning this measure is the best-case scenario for St. Louis. Otherwise, I can’t imagine they won’t see an influx of lawsuits from everyone who has been hurt or has a child who has been hurt at one of the city’s parks, all blaming the lack of supervision at these supposed “child care facilities.”

After all, the city is bringing this on themselves.

Meanwhile, what happens with the thugs that have turned St. Louis into a war zone? Absolutely nothing. They’ll continue to bring guns into parks and continue to gun people down indiscriminately. Absolutely nothing will change. Nothing at all.

OK, I take that back, one thing will change.

That’s the amount of tax dollars that will be spent defending the city in lawsuit after lawsuit.