"Hopefully [this] will help localities like Columbus understand that they're going to have to pay a cost for doing this."

That's a politician being unusually direct about what's actually happening — city officials making a deliberate calculation that ignoring state law costs them less than following it. When the answer to that calculation becomes punitive damages, the math changes fast.

Idaho's had similar preemption fights, and the pattern is always the same: a city passes something it knows won't survive a challenge, banks on nobody having the money or patience to fight it, and waits. A bill like this flips that. The city is now the one who has to calculate whether the ordinance is worth the exposure.

What's the closest your city or county has come to passing something that conflicted with state firearms law — and did anyone actually push back on it?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett