It looks like preemption is doing what it’s supposed to in Ohio:
Clyde, Ohio, is a small town, but its legal quest to keep guns out of city parks could have a big effect on firearms laws across the state.The Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Sandusky County town’s appeal of a court ruling that struck down its anti-gun ordinance as being in conflict with state law.
The outcome of the case, while months away, apparently will determine whether Ohio cities can enact restrictions on firearms beyond the statewide standard.
Around here we have lots of parks with no weapons signage, but under Pennsylvania law they are as good as dirt. I always assume they don’t apply to LTC holders. While generally they are summary offenses, I’m pretty confident I could beat any charge in state court because of our own preemption law.
There have been other cases as well.
It’s a nice law — I used to have to add another ten miles to my daily commute to avoid the world’s cheapest assault weapon from coming into play — but it’s been a pain to get and maintain. Had to pass it over a veto, and nearly none of the uglier cities actually bother paying attention to it.
Hopefully this’ll hit the courts before the Cleveland v. Ohio one.
This is an issue that the Virginia Citizen’s Defense League has been fighting for years.
Our strength is that we have dedicated members throughout the state to get the ball rolling on a local level and then escalate it if needed. When we notice something like this, we first send letters to the appropriate officials and cc the city attorney and mayor. If that doesn’t get the signs removed or the ordinances repealed, we hit a few city council meetings en masse to voice our displeasure and to get it on the record that they know their ordinances and signs are in violation of state law…we make sure we put several references to “no entity is above the law” and “citizens are expected to follow the law, we only ask that the government do the same”.
If that fails, the next step is getting the state attorney general and lawmakers involved. For some reason, State legislators tend to take it personally when local yokels ignore their legislative efforts.
The last resort is lawsuits. We have only had to go that far once or twice. Generally, when they are publicly exposed as lawbreakers in no uncertain terms, they get a little less bold about their transgressions.
Ohio has got a couple of vibrant and active organizations that are working these issues there in Ohioans for Concealed Carry and The Buckeye Firearms Association
The closest thing that Pennsylvania seems to have is a hunting/conservationist group The Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs
Pennsylvania seems to be in need of some leadership in the gun rights front.
President Sebastian of the Pennsylvania Citizen’s Defense League.
That’s got a nice ring to it.
I have never seen a no firearms sign in Indiana (not even at rest areas, where they are not prohibited, unlike Ohio and many other states), and they would have no force of law there anyway. I’ve seen one here in Happy Valley, at a bar in “downtown” State College. Interestingly, the year before last, our year’s high profile murder occurred at that bar, when one patron stabbed another thirty-some times.
The sign is still there, by the way.
This is an issue that the Virginia Citizen’s Defense League has been fighting for years.
Our strength is that we have dedicated members throughout the state to get the ball rolling on a local level and then escalate it if needed. When we notice something like this, we first send letters to the appropriate officials and cc the city attorney and mayor. If that doesn’t get the signs removed or the ordinances repealed, we hit a few city council meetings en masse to voice our displeasure and to get it on the record that they know their ordinances and signs are in violation of state law…we make sure we put several references to “no entity is above the law” and “citizens are expected to follow the law, we only ask that the government do the same”.
If that fails, the next step is getting the state attorney general and lawmakers involved. For some reason, State legislators tend to take it personally when local yokels ignore their legislative efforts.
The last resort is lawsuits. We have only had to go that far once or twice. Generally, when they are publicly exposed as lawbreakers in no uncertain terms, they get a little less bold about their transgressions.
Ohio has got a couple of vibrant and active organizations that are working these issues there in Ohioans for Concealed Carry and The Buckeye Firearms Association.
The closest thing that Pennsylvania seems to have is a hunting/conservationist group: The Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs.
Pennsylvania seems to be in need of some leadership in the gun rights front.
President Sebastian of the Pennsylvania Citizen’s Defense League.
That’s got a nice ring to it.
Pennsylvania seems to be in need of some leadership in the gun rights front.
The gun rights movement in PA is very fragmented. There are a lot of groups. I often say you can’t swing a cat in Pennsylvania without hitting a sportsmens group. Anyone who’s anyone has one.
ACSL – Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League is the closest thing we have to ACSL, but needless to say, they tend to focus on Western Pennsylvania. There hasn’t been much of a movement to remove local restrictions on concealed carry because we all routinely ignore them, knowing full well they don’t have any weight in law.
VCDL has been very effective at the local level with these kinds of things. It’s a great model for how activists can work at the local level to get bad laws removed. I’d definitely like to see a PA group, but I worry if I started my own PCDL, I’d just be another Pennsylvanian with my own pro-gun group :)
The VCDL actually started out as the “Northern Virginia Citizen’s Defense League” in 1994. It took several years to expand into a statewide group.
Perhaps you could try starting a chapter (or at least encourage them to start one) of the ACSL in your area and help them to expand in that way.
The only issue I have with “sportsmen’s” groups is that they can easily get sidetracked by the hunting issue and not support non-hunting related aspects of the Second Amendment. If you’re confident that the ACSL won’t fall into that trap, they may be a good group to build off of.
The other option would be to form an umbrella group for organization and mobilization of the smaller groups. It would probably have to have no power to set policy within individual organizations but would basically be a communications network and rallying point. That wouldn’t be too hard to set up if the disparate groups are willing to play.
Some sort of “Pennsylvania Hunters and Shooters Coalition”. That could easily morph into a statewide organization on a par with Ohio’s or Virginia’s.
The way to approach that would be to contact the presidents of the two or three largest groups in Pennsylvania and sell the idea to them. Point them in the right direction and let them take the ball and run with it. The smaller groups could then be added one by one until you’ve got a coalition.
I know I’m making difficult tasks sound easy, but somebody’s gotta do the dirty work.
If you’re ever of a mind to start to begin to commence thinking about it, you might want to contact the leadership of the West Virginia Citizen’s Defense League for “lessons learned.” They just got rolling at the beginning of this year and are really doing well from everything I’ve heard.
Well, there’s FOAC (Firearm Owners Against Crime) who are supposedly the state NRA affiliate, but as far as I can tell, they do nothing but send out voter recommendations before elections. But you can do far, far worse when it comes to gun rights than Pennsylvania — Virginia or Texas would be examples, not to mention the more obvious ones, like Massachusetts), unless you happen to live in Philly, and then, you have my sympathies.
FOAC isn’t the NRA affiliate. FOAC is a PAC run by Kim Stoefler, who is affiliated with ACSL as their legislative chairman.
The NRA state affiliate in Pennsylvania is the Pennsylvania Rifle and Pistol Association, which doesn’t do much politically. It’s mostly a shooter’s organization.
I think the reason you see such fragmentation in Pennsylvania is because gun rights are fairly safe here, and we’ve not any real serious challenges to our gun rights since the Act 17 days. Even then, the pro-gun movement in PA was fragmented and there was much bickering over the whole thing.
You do have blanket organizations, like Harry Schneider’s Pennsylvania Sportsmens Association, that formed to unify all the disparate groups against the recent measures Rendell and the City are pushing. Don’t let the Sportsmens title fool you. A lot of these groups are pretty hard core on gun rights. ACSL certainly has that orientation. PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs does the hunting thing too, but are also pretty strong on gun rights.