By Tanya Metaksa
Everytown for Gun Safety, the Michael Bloomberg-funded gun prohibition lobbying group, published a position paper on firearm preemption laws in 2018, announcing their opposition to state preemption statutes.
At the time, they even went so far as stating that “preemption laws are associated with increased rates of gun trafficking.”
Since that time, lawmakers in one state, Colorado, repealed their preemption law. In the 2018 state-wide election, Democrats took over and according to a Colorado Politics article quoting Tony Robinson, chair of the University of Colorado Denver’s political science department, “Colorado is a blue state, it’s been going blue, and this election confirms that.”
Democrats flipped the Colorado Senate, which had been under Republican control, thus giving Democrats complete control of the government. In 2020 they added another seat to their majority resulting in 20-15 advantage and after this year Democrats will have a veto-proof majority.
As a result of the 2021 passage of SB251, repealing Colorado’s firearms preemption law along a party-line vote, cities such as Denver and Boulder have gutted Coloradoan’s Second Amendment rights. Now the only way to remove these anti-Second Amendment laws is by court action.
Already, several cases have been initiated.
The Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO) v. Superior isa lawsuit initiated when the town of Superior, CO passed a ban on so-called “assault weapons.” District Judge Raymond P. Moore issued a temporary restraining order against the town’s restrictive ordinance. After the Judge’s order, the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners tweeted, “Bloomberg’s New York attorneys have officially stepped in. We are in for a major fight. Superior is officially ground zero for gun control.”
Following the Superior case, RMGO also initiated a case against the town of Louisville, CO. This action has led to the town temporarily halting enforcement of its gun laws. It looks like the legal challenge against the towns in Colorado passing gun ban ordinances will be a long, drawn out affair.
The 2022 election for state legislatures has been a disaster for Republicans in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, where state houses have been flipped to the Democrats. Additionally, the legislative houses in the Arizona and New Hampshire could also be flipped. Republicans, on the other hand, have not flipped any state legislatures, but have created supermajorities in Florida in both houses. The South Carolina House, and the Senate in the states of Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin, followed suit.
Eliminating preemption laws appears to be the next attack from the gun ban lobby and its allies.
In July 2021 the American Journal of Public Health published an article entitled “The Biggest Legal Obstacle to Gun Regulation: State Preemption Laws, not the Second Amendment.”
In that article author Joseph Blocker of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University School of Law references another article in that same issue, by Jennifer L. Pomeranz, Diana Silver and Sarah Lieff all public health researchers. The gun ban researchers and Michael Bloomberg are aiming to repeal state preemption laws as soon as possible.
