PA Bill Number: HB829
Title: In preliminary provisions, further providing for definitions;
Description: An Act amending the act of April 12, 1951 (P.L.90, No.21), known as the Liquor Code, in preliminary provisions, further providing for definitions;
Last Action: Signed in House
Last Action Date: Jul 3, 2024
Pittsburgh: What's the point of passing a law that everyone knows is illegal? :: 03/01/2019
PITTSBURGH — The mayor of this city, Bill Peduto, in relatively short order will likely pass an anti-gun bill with the support of most of city council. It is a Democratic city in a Democratic county run overwhelmingly by Democratic machine politics, so that part is not noteworthy. What is noteworthy is that it is blatantly against the law.
Peduto knows it, Councilman Corey O’Connor, who introduced the legislation knows it, and they have bluntly said to anyone in shouting distance they don’t care. Why? Because they believe they have the moral authority to break the law. So they will.
The council has been holding public hearings on the proposed ban on certain types of guns, bump stocks, and ammunition used in mass shootings.
Pennsylvania state law dictates municipalities do not have the authority to pass gun legislation and those laws must be handled at the state level. If the Pittsburgh law is enacted, any county resident could quickly file a lawsuit challenging it.
When District Attorney Stephen Zappala warned O’Connor and Peduto after he read the proposed city law that would happen, Peduto bristled at the DA and let off a stream of insults at his fellow elected Democrat that included a dare to arrest him.
While there will be no political consequences, Zappala correctly noted there will be legal consequences. City officials are also setting a bad example for young people, teaching them to bypass the legal process to draw a line in the sand on something they don’t like.
The proposed gun law comes in response to the worst massacre of Jews in this country, when a gunman last fall killed 11 members of the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a slaughter that has left this city and that neighborhood in deep anguish and looking for a way to never let that happen again.
Former Deputy Mayor Joe Mistick, a Duquesne University law professor and lifelong Democrat, said there is a right way and wrong way to do gun control, and Peduto and O’Connor are going about this all wrong.
Mistick, a resident of Squirrel Hill who stood beside me at the crime scene the day of the shooting, said he gets why O’Connor introduced the bill. But the reality is the council and the mayor have to abide by a law that most of the time they benefit from.
In short: You can’t just navigate laws to suit your causes, you have to do it legally and without politics.
Mistick points to Dillon’s Rule, named after John Forrest Dillon, a 19th-century federal circuit court judge: “It states local municipalities are arms of the state, without inherent powers of their own and that certain laws without state approval are beyond the power of local government."
“Legislation on guns is one of those who fall under state approval,” Mistick said.
“If Peduto wants to change state law then he needs to go to Harrisburg and haunt every state legislator’s front door to plead his case to get state lawmakers to make the same kind of state changes that Connecticut did after the Sandy Hook shootings,” he said.
Or, he could use his cozy relationship with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to fund buses of activists to go to Harrisburg to hear their cause.
Grandstanding, even if you don't have the moral grounds to do it, is easy. Governing is the hard work that takes that glory away, but good governance is really what we should demand in this city and this country.
