I cannot see the name “Cincinnati” without thinking of WKRP in Cincinnati. Yes, I’m a child of my time and my time was a long time back. What can I do?

However, as much fun as the show was, there is a real city with that name, and like many cities, they have issues.

One of those is, unsurprisingly, crime. Most larger urban centers seem to have that same issue.

As Cam reported on yesterday, the mayor there, among others, is fighting against preemption.

He also has plans for a city without preemption.

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and several Cincinnati City Council members introduced two new gun control ordinances they say will help curb gun violence and violence against women in the city.

The proposals would keep anyone who has a domestic violence conviction from legally owning a gun in the city.

And the administration wants to make the failure to keep guns locked up a crime as well, especially if a child is harmed.

Both of these would be misdemeanors and, as such, would be punishable by less than a year in jail.

The problem here is that it’s already illegal for anyone with a domestic violence conviction to own a gun. That’s a federal law, after all, and those who violate it are committing a felony. It’s also apparently illegal under Ohio state law. Why not just enforce those laws rather than passing your own?

As for the mandatory storage laws, there are huge problems there.

After all, who is the city of Cincinnati to tell people how they should store their weapons? While I agree that parents should keep their guns secured at all times–and yes, everyone should, actually–it’s still not anyone else’s decision on just what that means.

To penalize anyone for not having guns secured generally means penalizing people who are either the victims of a theft or people who are dealing with the injury or death of their child. There’s really no good look here, to say the least.

Cincinnati needs to stay out of this. Preemption exists in part to keep communities from creating a patchwork of laws that no person can reasonably be expected to successfully navigate while traveling through the state. Someone who visits Cincinnati for the night might well have no ability to lock their gun up overnight as they’re just there for a single night. Yet they may end up having that gun stolen or something else happen.

And since they’re just passing through, how would they know about a mandatory storage requirement? They’re not moving in, after all.

But for anti-gunners like the mayor here, that’s all irrelevant. All that matters is infringing on people’s rights while claiming it’s really about public safety.

It should be remembered that no safe is foolproof. Requirements to get one often lead people to get the cheapest–and most easily entered–safes on the market. That’s not securing anything.

It does give the city a chance to punish lawful gun owners, though, so I guess that’s the win for them.