Feb 6, 2015.
HARRISBURG – A Dauphin County judge will decide who will win and who will lose the first round in the much-publicized fight over Harrisburg’s gun laws.
How Judge Andrew H. Dowling will rule has yet to be seen. What is certain is that the rhetoric surrounding the battle shows no signs of abating.
That was evident immediately after a 90-minute court hearing Dowling held Friday on requests to either bar the city temporarily from enforcing its gun ordinances, or to stay action on the case pending a wider state court decision on the issue.
During an impromptu press conference, Mayor Eric Papenfuse said, essentially, that the plaintiffs suing the city are merely money-seeking shills for the gun lobby.
“These ordinances are in the interest of public safety,” the mayor said. “That’s why we’re fighting so hard to defend them.”
Moments later, attorney Justin McShane, one of those plaintiffs, said city officials don’t have the best interests of the city’s residents in mind as they rack up legal fees contesting the case. The only thing really standing in the way of a settlement is the hubris of Harrisburg’s leaders, McShane said.
The scene in the packed courtroom was a bit less contentious.
The overall fight concerns a lawsuit filed by McShane, retired state police officer Todd Hoover and the U.S. Law Shield of Pennsylvania gun owners group.
They claim city ordinances that prohibit the carrying of firearms in city parks, ban the firing of guns in the city limits, restrict the possession of firearms by minors and require gun owners to report the theft of their weapons are unconstitutional and illegally go beyond the parameters set by state law.
The suit was filed under just-passed state legislation that allows such challenges to municipal gun laws and permits the suers to collect legal fees from the communities they successfully sue. Yet that state law itself is being challenged in Commonwealth Court.
Friday’s hearing dealt only with three relatively narrow issues of the Harrisburg battle. One issue is a request by the city to stay action on the U.S. Law Shield suit until Commonwealth Court rules on whether Act 192, the law that allows such suits, is unconstitutional. Another is the city’s argument that the plaintiffs lack legal standing to sue the city.
Simultaneously, McShane and his allies are asking Dowling to grant a temporary injunction to bar the city from enforcing its gun ordinances while the local lawsuit is fought out.
McShane argued during the hearing that allowing the contested city laws to remain in force during the legal fight is causing irreparable harm by depriving legal gun owners of their rights to carry weapons in Harrisburg, especially for self-defense. That, he said, is posing a “harm to my personal freedom.”
He added that the stolen gun reporting mandate is improper since it is “an extra duty (on gun owners) that does not exist on the statewide level.”
The “right thing to do,” McShane suggested, would be to grant the temporary injection and the city’s request to stay action on the case.
City attorney Joshua Autry countered that the ordinances aren’t impairing anyone’s rights, but are in the interest of public welfare. Nothing in the city’s laws bars anyone from using a legally-owned gun to legitimately defend themselves, he said.
And the Third Class City Code, a state statute, allows the city to pass such gun regulations, Autry argued.
Dowling did not set a time frame for ruling on the injunction, stay and legal standing issues.
After the court hearing, Papenfuse said the ordinances are vital to the effort to stem the “epidemic of gun violence” in the city.
McShane castigated city officials for not taking an offer he made, and which was to expire at midday Friday, to rescind the ordinances in return for withdrawal of the suit and an agreement by the plaintiffs not to seek legal fees.
By continuing to fight the suit, “they are spending money that would be better spent giving (Police) Chief Carter more police out on the street,” McShane said.
McShane said he still hasn’t decided whether he will indeed seek legal fees from the city if his side wins the case. “It depends on how head-strong (city officials) are,” he said.
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