Earlier this week, I wrote about the proposal by the mayor of Savannah, Georgia to pass a city ordinace that would require people to report lost or stolen guns and for people to lock up their guns when left in unattended vehicles.
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Now, these aren’t the most horrific gun control laws imaginable, but they’re still gun control laws. Savannah is in Georgia, as I already noted. Georgia, however, is a preemption state. That means he can’t legally enact gun control laws.
I gave him a bit of hell over it, but I was far from the last to say something.
It seems he’s catching some much-deserved heat.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) is questioning the legality of the law.
“The mayor of Savannah is out of state code by even attempting to do this, and if the city attempts to vote this ordinance in and approve it, they’ll be in direct violation of the state pre-emption law, which is in Title 16 of the Georgia code,” said Art Thomm, the State Director of Legislative Affairs for the NRA.
Thomm says the NRA will take action if the law is put into place.
“I can assure you that the NRA is on top of this. We will be communicating with the proper entities and authorities and the general assembly as well and the leadership there to ensure that they understand that some folks are trying to go rogue on them in the state and if it does have to go to litigation the NRA will be there as well.”
While the NRA isn’t what it once was, it’s still the proverbial 800 pound gorilla of the gun rights world. They’re also far from the only entity that would challenge any such ordinances that get passed in Savannah.
Look, I think people should secure their guns and if they’re lost or stolen, they should be reported.
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Yet I don’t want the government trying to mandate what we do in this regard because, frankly, they’d screw it up. Savannah Mayor Van Johnson says he supports the Second Amendment, that this isn’t an attack on the right to keep and bear arms, but anytime the government starts telling people what they can and can’t do with their guns, it’s an infringement on our right to bear arms. It’s just a short step from “you should lock it up” to “you can’t carry it out of the house at all.”
And, of course, there’s that whole preemption thing. If that is not defended vigorously, we’ll lose the protections of preemption in time. As someone who lives in Georgia, that’s a hard pass from me.
I hope Johnson has the good sense to abandon this proposal. He can blame preemption if he wants or say he didn’t think it through and was just speaking off the cuff. I honestly don’t care. I just want this stupidity to stop once and for all.
Maybe Johnson should take a step back and look at why people are breaking into cars in the first place. Criminal behavior is the problem, not the actions of law-abiding citizens.
