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Thu Dec 6, 2007
9:59 pm
by McGehee
[Our Times]
[Courting Disaster]
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Like Instapundit, I haven’t posted here about the Omaha mass murder—but I think I’m pretty much in sync with Prof. Reynolds:
But it’s worth noting—since apparently most of the media reports haven’t—that this was another mass shooting in a “gun-free” zone. It seems to me that we’ve reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in “gun free” zones is well-established at this point, and I don’t see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free.
In a similar vein, I’m cheered somewhat by this development of local importance:
The Georgia Court of Appeals has overturned a Coweta Superior Court decision and ruled that Coweta County’s ordinance prohibiting guns in parks is preempted by state law.
The Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Tuesday to overturn a decision by Judge Jack Kirby. In June, Kirby ruled in favor of Coweta County in a suit filed against Coweta by Ed Stone and gun rights group Georgia Carry.
Stone, a Coweta resident and president of Georgia Carry, had appeared before the Coweta County Board of Commissioners earlier this year. He told the commissioners that the rule forbidding guns in county parks was preempted by state law.
When the county refused to change the rule, Stone and Georgia Carry sued.
[...]
Georgia state law states that “no county or municipal corporation, by zoning or by ordinance, resolution, or other enactment, shall regulate in any manner gun shows; the possession, ownership, transport, carrying, transfer, sale, purchase, licensing, or registration of firearms or components of firearms; firearms dealers, or dealers in firearms components,” according to the opinion.
“The plain language of the statute expressly precludes a county from regulating ‘in any manner… carrying… of firearms,’” according to the opinion. “Under these circumstances, the preemption is express and the trial court erred in concluding otherwise.” »
Gun ban in parks overturned
Plain language should be interpreted as though the legislature meant the meaning to be equally plain. The county had argued that the county may “enhance” state law, but that’s a general rule that is clearly and explicitly superseded by the state law in question. When the state law says, “no county or municipal corporation, by zoning or by ordinance, resolution, or other enactment, shall...”, that doesn’t mean, “unless they really really want to.”
I’m always in favor of courts reading the law to mean what it plainly says. It’s just too bad it’s so newsworthy when it happens.
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