The mayor of Lansing, Michigan, and the city’s police chief want tougher gun control laws from the state legislature, which only recently wrapped up its business for the year, setting in motion a time clock that will allow new gun restrictions to become effective in mid-February.
According to WLNS News, Mayor Andy Schor—a Democrat first elected to the office in 2017—and Chief Ellery Sosebee want to crack down on alleged “careless” gun owners.
But a flyer illustrated in the WLNS story suggests this may actually be an effort to erode Michigan’s three-decades-old preemption statute. The flyer says both officials are asking lawmakers to “Change Michigan Law to Allow Local Governments to,” and it is followed by a wish list.
The flyer also suggests “Other Changes to Michigan Law,” such as “Allow for local control regarding guns & ammunition.”
There are calls for “increased penalties for failing to keep or secure a firearm from someone prohibited from possessing a gun” and “limiting magazine capacity to original manufacturer specifications.”
The Lansing City Pulse reported, “at a news conference they released a list of measures that could be taken to curb a rising trend of lost or stolen guns ending up in the hands of criminals.”
It’s not the first time Schor has gone after guns. In 2021, WKAR News reported how Schor had called for an ordinance requiring lost or stolen guns to be reported to the police. By then, Schor was in his second term.
The timing is interesting, as just a few days ago, the Holton Township Board of Trustees adopted a resolution declaring the community—located in Muskegon County—to be a “Second Amendment Sanctuary.” According to the Midwesterner News, this resolution contains a militia addendum that says township residents “are eligible to join the militia and may make their intentions known by acknowledging their intent on social media, explicitly telling friends or family members they wish to join or stating their intent by letter to the Township Militia.”
This is not the first time, or the first state, where local municipalities have wanted to erode state preemption statutes or outright challenge such laws.
The City of San Francisco has tried twice in the past to enact local gun restrictions, but both times, intervention by gun rights organizations—specifically the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association—thwarted the efforts.
The City of Edmonds, Washington, tried to adopt a so-called “safe storage” ordinance, only to be similarly challenged by SAF and NRA in a case known as Bass v. City of Edmonds, which went all the way to the state Supreme Court, where the state’s preemption law was unanimously upheld in 2022.
Possibly one of the best examinations of Michigan’s preemption law can be found on the website for the Giffords gun control group. The language of Michigan’s statute is easily understood:
“A local unit of government shall not impose special taxation on, enact or enforce any ordinance or regulation pertaining to, or regulate in any other manner the ownership, registration, purchase, sale, transfer, transportation, or possession of pistols, other firearms, or pneumatic guns, ammunition for pistols or other firearms, or components of pistols or other firearms, except as otherwise provided by federal law or a law of this state.”
The law was originally passed in 1990 (Act 319) and amended in 2015 (Act 29), so it is one of the earliest of the preemption laws, many of which were patterned after the statute passed in Washington, first in 1983 and strengthened in 1985.
The question that must be answered is whether eroding Michigan’s preemption law will accomplish what mayors like Schor envision. Probably not.
As Ammoland News has reported earlier, a good example would be the City of Seattle, which has gotten away with adopting a gun control “sales tax” on firearms and ammunition, adopted in the summer of 2015 and enforced starting in 2016. In the years since enactment, the number of homicides in the city has more than doubled, the tax has never come close to reaching its originally projected annual revenue ($30,000 to $500,000), and one of the city’s busiest gun retailers moved to a different city in a neighboring county. This year, Seattle is expected to set a new record for the number of murders in the city, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has called the law a “total failure.”
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About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Translation: Communist Mayor and Communist Chief want to infringe and want to pretend it’s legal.
It’s always the same story… ‘common sense’ and ‘careless’ being the key words to strip folks of their rights. God forbid they should build larger jails and implement extreme sentences for prohibited criminals in possession of a stolen firearm. That’s like taking everyone’s right to drive because one person got a DWI but thta’s their concept.
What they’re proposing, “better” controls on guns as opposed to even minimal controls on those who use them for criminal purposes, is akin to putting better BandAids on a sucking chest wound. One advantage to our federal system is the ability for each of the states to become a laboratory, trying new things, seeing which work and which do not, and even copying ideas that have proven to be effective in another state. I would suggest that Michigan, California, and all of the other states consider Florida’s preemption stature, which just works AND has teeth in its provisions that make… Read more »
I would like you to add one perspective to your list and that is Canada. I feel Canada is a testing ground to see what they can get away with in America or how America can circumvent the same thing from happening here that happened there. Think of the trucker protest and what happened in Canada and what was not allowed to happen in America because the government blocked off roads, made it illegal for any truck traffic in town or at the capitol, did not allow permits for protest which shouldn’t be required in the first place and the… Read more »
flori….daaaa of hanging chads fame
They keep poking the bear. The left keeps pushing for a dissolution of the union into commie/socialist blue states and freedom loving red states. I have considered that possible solution and it does not appear doable without violence. That is an abhorrent thought. If there is another civil war, enemies of America will step in to control us. And we won’t like the results. I’m old. I could be totally wrong on this. In fact, I hope I am. But it just doesn’t seem I am.
Not being argumentative for it’s own sake, but where does this prediction of foreign martial intervention come from? I still believe the Right’s “rifle behind every blade of grass” would either deter intervention, ot quickly discourage it.
I cannot picture another conventional civil war; but go ahead and issue the suppressed Beretta 71’s and party/Leftist organization membership lists.
We’re fighting a proxy war with Russia at the moment. China is teasing with a possible invasion of Taiwan. If the USA started a hot war between red and blue factions, either one of those entities would likely jump into the fray. If they didn’t, why we have a bunch of blue helmets run by the largest anti-American organization in the world who would love to have a go.
Those blue helmets would make excellent aiming points eh…
they are called criminals because they do not obey the law(s). more laws will not make criminals obey them. more prison cells and executions is what will make some criminals change. only the most stupid people blame the tools and absolve the operators. wake up stupid
On the subject of failed gun laws, the only way I see to assuage the attack on the firearms preemption, is to amend the state constitution. What is needed is not a preemption law. It needs to be a state constitutional amendment, that the state government occupies the entire field of firearms and ammunition laws and regulations; local ordinances notwithstanding, would be moot. It must be plain that the authority to delegate authority to make or alter firearms laws or regulations, is denied to the state legislature.
I think this is the latest in the anti-2A toolbox. The mayor of Santa Fe, NM is trying the same tactic:
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/city-council-oks-mayors-call-for-state-constitutional-amendment-on-gun-laws/article_dd6735ea-7cc4-11ee-b65d-d395df6e2ae7.html
The real goal is to make felons of everyone who carries (or even owns) a gun by tripping them up with a plethora of differing gun laws that no one can keep track of.
you have all the laws you need right now, all you have to do is enforce them. you act like if you punish them you will hurt their feelings, well tough shit.just do your job like your suppose to.
The St. Louis City Council passed and the Mayor just signed an ordinance that prohibits open carry, with a penalties of $500 and up to 30 days in jail. I do not see how it comports with State preemption law for those with concealed carry permits. Of course under Heller and Bruen the whole thing should be ruled B.S..
I left that commie state many decades ago, in part due to hassles involving pistol permits. Seeing ever-encroaching writing on the wall, I moved to a free state. Seems like the libs followed me here tho, and the battle to preserve liberty is never won…