Savannah Courting Disaster With New Gun Control Law

AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File

There are a lot of states with preemption laws. My own home state of Georgia is one of them. What that means is that if my hometown decided that you should be held accountable for your gun getting stolen, they couldn't actually do anything legally except ask lawmakers at the state level to pass a law.

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That's kind of how preemption works.

Unfortunately, the mayor of Savannah didn't get the memo. I noted previously how he wanted to create a local gun control ordinance, just as I noted that he legally couldn't.

I mean, the city council can vote for it, but the moment they try to enforce it, someone has grounds to challenge it, where it will die a glorious death. Yet that requires them to be stupid enough to actually pass it.

It turns out they're exactly that stupid.

Gun rights advocates gave their opinions on Savannah's new city law regarding guns in cars.

On Thursday, Savannah City Council unanimously passed an ordinance that makes it a crime to leave an unsecured and visible gun in an unlocked car.


According to the city, more than 80% of guns left unlocked and accessible in cars lead them to being stolen and used in crimes. That's why city council hopes the new law will decrease crime.

But Grit, Guns, and Ammo owner Catalina Accardi said this ordinance targets the wrong people.

"Rather than focusing on the criminals and the people who are committing these acts you're [the city] focusing on the people that are only trying to protect themselves and are doing so legally by all state and federal laws," Accardi said.

And, of course, there's absolutely no chance at all that this will survive any kind of challenge because preemption is still a thing in Georgia.

That somehow hasn't made it into any of the Savannah media's coverage of this story. Funny, that.

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Regardless, this is a stupid move.

Yet it also seems some figure this is dumber than that because not only does it violate preemption, it doesn't actually require a gun to be in a locked and secured storage container. You're in the clear if the gun is in your glove box.

From a Second Amendment standpoint, this is a bit less egregious because the law doesn't require you to buy something special just so you can leave your gun in the car, but it also means that almost no one is going to get charged.

After all, if a gun is stolen out of a car, people will just say it was in the glove box.

Moreover, if someone breaks into a car, guess where one of the first places they'll look for things of value happens to be. That's right, the glove box.

So this is what Savannah has decided to do. It's actually impressive if you really think about it.

It's impressive that they managed to craft a law that is so completely and absolutely stupid as this one. On every level, it's a trainwreck in the making, doing absolutely nothing while still running afoul of the state's preemption law.

I mean, it usually takes effort to be this stupid, yet here we are.

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