Georgia Governor Vetoes Bill Strengthening Firearm Preemption Law

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is hardly a Second Amendment squish, but one his latest moves is actually drawing praise from the gun control lobby. On Wednesday, the governor vetoed SB 204, a bill meant to strengthen the state’s firearm preemption law by adding the word “storage” to the list of gun-owning activities that localities are not allowed to regulate. The bill was a response to the city of Savannah’s ordinance that allows for misdemeanor charges against anyone who leaves a firearm in an unlocked vehicle, which has also led to lat least one lawsuit by Second Amendment groups. Firearms Policy Coalition and an individual member have sued over the ordinance in state court, and are are currently asking for the ordinance to be enjoined in its entirety after a Chatham County judge ruled the law conflicted with state statute and the Second Amendment. 

So what was Kemp’s beef with the bill? Here’s the full text of his veto statement. 

SB 204 would strengthen the existing cause of action lawful gun owners may bring against a local government that attempts to impose limits on possession, ownership, transport, or purchase of firearms beyond state and federal requirements. In addition to increasing the statutory damages available, the bill would remove the existing requirement that such a lawsuit be brought against the county or municipal corporation that enacted the offending ordinance. This would open the door to lawsuits against law enforcement officers, including in their personal capacity, who do not have a say in enacting the ordinance in question. I wholeheartedly support increasing the monetary penalties for local governments that attempt to impede the rights of lawful weapon carriers; however, such penalties should be targeted towards the leaders who enact such ordinances, not the officers who are tasked with enforcing them. 

I like Brian Kemp, but I have to say that I’m less than impressed with his rationale for vetoing SB 204. The law would have made it crystal clear that any action a municipality or other political subdivision takes to regulate the possession, ownership, transport, carrying, transfer, sale, purchase, licensing, storage, or registration of firearms is completely unenforceable. At that point, any officer who does try to enforce one of these laws should be at risk of being sued, in my opinion. 

Police are already able to use their individual discretion in terms of how they’ll enforce a particular law, as anyone who’s gotten off with a warning instead of a speeding ticket can attest. If a city like Savannah insisted that officers continue to enforce a storage ordinance in violation of state law, I’d say individual officers would be well within their rights to say “no,” or at the very least chose to issue a warning instead of a citation or make an arrest. 

Gun control advocates are empowered by Kemp’s veto, and we may very well see other communities use his action as a springboard to establish storage ordinances of their own. 

Heather Hallett, the founder and director of Georgia Majority for Gun Safety, said she’s celebrating the veto as a victory.

“I am just thrilled that public safety and specifically the right of municipalities to decide their own public safety framework is what won in the end,” she said.

Hallett called the bill part of a national pattern of states trying to preempt local governments from promoting gun safety.

“What we see is that a very small portion of the voting populace exerts undue influence over public safety questions like these foundational gun safety laws like secure storage laws,” she said. “And part of the way that they’ve done that is through state preemption. It is a strategy. It’s definitely a part of a playbook that we see across the country because state preemption laws have basically tied the hands of communities across the country.”

Hallett gets it completely backwards. The vast majority of states have firearm preemption laws in place, because it makes sense to have a uniform standard across a state rather than a patchwork quilt of local ordinances that can easily trip up gun owners as they travel through communities. These laws have been in place for decades in most cases, and it’s the gun control lobby that’s trying to undo them in order to put more gun laws in place. 

Kemp’s veto of SB 204 doesn’t roll back or repeal Georgia’s preemption law, despite what Hallett said in response. It simply keeps the status quo in place. But as her comments indicate, anti-gunners are going to see this as an opportunity to undermine the preemption law. This was the wrong move for the governor to make, and Georgia gun owners may very well pay a price for Kemp’s veto of SB 204. 

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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