Pennsylvania Cities Seem to Think They Can Get Around the State’s Gun Control Preemption Law

In 2022, York, Pennsylvania, weathered 22 homicides, a record number of slayings that gave the growing industrial city of 45,000 a higher homicide rate than Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the state’s biggest cities.

One particularly brazen incident shocked officials into action. On July 6, 2022, Shaheim Carr, 27, left a house near downtown York. Four men chased Carr into a breezeway and fired nearly 100 bullets. The shots killed Carr and sprayed gunfire into nearby buildings, including into the home of the mother of York’s City Council president, Edquina Washington.

Among other incidents, the shooting prompted Washington to sponsor two gun-safety bills, despite pushback from gun rights supporters. One bill, approved last year, banned ghost guns, weapons that lack serial numbers. The other banned machine gun converters, including Glock switches, devices that modify handguns so that they can fire like fully automatic weapons. It was approved this September.

Before she pushed the two gun safety measures, Washington conferred with the Police Department and studied what was happening 100 miles east in Philadelphia. She learned that Philly had passed its own firearm restrictions. Now, York is among the handful of Pennsylvania jurisdictions that have been inspired by Philadelphia to ban ghost guns.

To Washington, the legislation felt urgent, in part because one shooting can affect many people in the tightly packed city. “Our community is very dense. You have house on top of house,” she said, recalling that Carr was shot near a church, corner stores, and a YMCA with a daycare.

Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA and a South Philadelphia resident, lauded Philly for influencing the passage of gun safety legislation beyond its borders. “I’m proud that Philadelphia is finding innovative ways to keep us all safe and that we can be a beacon to end this crisis across the commonwealth,” he said. “We often have more resources to explore these opportunities.”

But the strategy of passing local laws to prevent gun violence is risky in Pennsylvania, a state with a preemption law, which gives it the sole authority to regulate firearms. Still, last February, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania upheld Philadelphia’s ghost gun ban. Since then, the city of Reading enacted a ban, as did Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, and Delaware County, which also banned switches.

Now, though, local measures in York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere are subject to a lawsuit that’s before the state Supreme Court.

“I believe the safety and lives of our residents is way more important and worth the risk” of being sued, Washington said.

— Mensah M. Dean in This Small Pennsylvania City Is Challenging the State’s Control Over Local Gun Laws