Supreme Court: State law preempts city gun storage ordinance - Yahoo News
The Washington state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled that a city ordinance requiring that guns be locked up and kept out of unauthorized hands is pre-empted by state law.
The ruling affirmed a three-judge state of appeals ruling last year in the case sparked by a lawsuit filed by three residents against the city of Edmonds after the city approved an ordinance in July 2018 requiring residents to lock up their guns or else face fines.
“Under our system of divided government, many elected bodies hold legislative power, including elected city councils. These councils, however, must legislate within constitutional constraints,” Chief Justice Steven González wrote, joined by the eight other justices on the high court. “One of those constraints is that city ordinances must not ‘conflict with general laws’ that have been enacted by the people of our state by initiative or by our state legislature.”
A statewide ballot measure that passed later that same year on gun safety doesn’t mandate that a firearm be stored in a particular way or place, but it created criminal penalties for when a gun isn’t properly stored and accessed by someone who is prohibited from possessing a firearm — such as a child — and used to injure or kill, displayed in public in an intimidating manner or used during a crime.
In a footnote, the court noted that since they resolved the issue of the underlying case on preemption, they did not address arguments “about the intersection of this law and Initiative 1639.”
Edmonds Mayor Mike Nelson said Thursday that the current preemption statute is overly broad, “tying the hands of all local governments in our state to do anything to protect our citizens.”
A previous effort by the city of Seattle to ban guns in parks was stopped by the courts under the same statute.
Nelson, who said he is a gun owner who keeps his firearm stored and locked, said he will push for the Legislature to make changes allowing local governments to have the authority to address guns in their communities.
The court pointed out that the adopted by the Legislature in 1985, specifies that the state “fully occupies and preempts the entire field of firearms regulation.”
source: https://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-state-law-preempts-224804110.html
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