St. Louis Fights to Weaken Missouri Preemption Law

Firearm preemption laws are in place in over 40 states across the country, and undoing those laws is one of the top priorities of the gun control lobby and their allies. Without preemption in place, localities can adopt their own gun control ordinances more restrictive than state law, and the patchwork quilt of local restrictions can lead to both legal jeopardy for gun owners and a variety of local laws that can be like playing legal Whack-a-Mole for Second Amendment organizations. 

With Republican supermajorities in place in Missouri, there’s no what for anti-gunners to scrap preemption through legislation. The city of St. Louis, however, is trying to weaken the state’s preemption law by defending an ordinance that squarely violates it. 

Back in 2017 the city passed an ordinance requiring gun owners to leave all unattended firearms in a locked container inside their vehicle, as well as promptly report the theft of any firearm to the St. Louis PD. Seven years later, a man named Michael Roth reported that his gun was stolen from his locked car while he was at church, the police cited him for not having his firearm in a locked container.  

Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges, but Roth sued the city anyway, arguing that the charges could always be reinstated. More importantly, he argued that the city’s ordinance was a violation of Missouri preemption law, and a circuit judge agreed with him last July. 

Instead of dropping the matter, the city decided to appeal, and last week oral arguments took place before a state appellate court. 

The state law in question has two key subsections. The first says the General Assembly “occupies and pre-empts the entire field of legislation touching in any way firearms, components, ammunition and supplies to the complete exclusion of any order, ordinance or regulation by any political subdivision of this state.”

A second subsection says local political subdivisions cannot pass any regulations on “the sale, purchase, purchase delay, transfer, ownership, use, keeping, possession, bearing, transportation, licensing, permit, registration, taxation other than sales and compensating use taxes or other controls on firearms, components, ammunition, and supplies.”

Roth’s attorney, Matt Vianello, told the court it was the broader first subsection that set the limits on what’s legally known as preemption — where a higher level of government sets limits on a lower level of government. Judges, he said, have to look at the plain language of the law to determine how far the General Assembly intended it to go.

“Their intent is clear: uniform firearm legislation throughout the state, so that you don’t have a hodgepodge of regulation just because you cross Skinker Boulevard coming into the city of St Louis,” Vianello said.

Nathan Puckett, an attorney for the city, told the court that the second subsection — which lists specific categories — was where the judges should look to decide the validity of the ordinance.

“The problem with looking to subsection one is that legislation ‘touching in any way firearms’ is not a specific area of legislation at all,” he said. “It is so general as to be nearly unlimited,” he said. Therefore, the court needs to look to subsection 2, which outlines specific areas like transportation and taxation.”

The city’s ordinance, Puckett said, dealt solely with the storage of firearms, which is not something on the list. Therefore, he said, it remains valid and the city should be allowed to enforce it.

Yes, the first subsection is nearly unlimited, because that’s exactly what lawmakers intended to do. And despite Puckett’s argument to the contrary, the second subsection is just as expansive. In addition to encompassing “possession” and “transportation”, which arguably covers leaving a firearm in a vehicle, subsection 2 also states that localities can’t adopt laws on a wide variety of enumerated practices, as well as “other controls on firearms, components, ammunition, and supplies.” 

If nothing else, how firearms are stored in vehicles would fall under those “other controls,” though the judge that struck down the ordinance instead said it encompassed use, transportation, and possession. The judge also noted, however, that there is a third subsection of the preemption law that does list some specific exceptions, but allowing localities to regulate the storage of firearms is not included. 

This seems like an easy call for the appellate court to make, and a waste of time and taxpayer money on the part of the city of St. Louis. The fact that city officials are continuing to defend the indefensible shows just how badly the anti-gunners want to get rid of preemption wherever possible… and how they’d target lawful gun owners instead of gun thieves and violent criminals  if they have the power to do so. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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