Several years ago, Pennsylvania municipalities began passing gun-restriction laws which were quickly challenged by firearms advocates and weapons manufacturers.

And with good reason. Pennsylvania has a Uniform Firearms Act that is explicit: “A municipality shall not enact any ordinance or take any other action dealing with the regulation of the transfer, ownership, transportation or possession of firearms.”

So these municipalities were forced to put their tails between their legs and rescind these ordinances. Obviously, the officeholders in these municipalities felt strongly about regulating firearms, especially in light of the dozens of shooting incidents and thousands of gun-related deaths that have occurred in the last generation.

Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter how they feel or how well-intentioned they are; they have to comply with state laws.

This means that legally armed individuals can walk into municipal parks, saunter down municipal streets and roads and not be subject to any punitive action.

One armed man walked into the Paradise Township Municipal Building in Monroe County late last year and shot and killed a part-time zoning officer.

Staff in the Tamaqua Area School District are being asked to volunteer to arm themselves as a deterrent to school shootings, although the program has been put on hold pending legal challenges.

These open carry laws have been gaining in popularity, especially in areas where there is a fear that gun opponents will push through counter legislation. Advocates of open carry laws have been vigilant and aggressive about challenging restrictions on their rights.

In Ortiz v. Commonwealth, the state Supreme Court struck down local assault weapons bans in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, finding that the state General Assembly had “denied all municipalities the power to regulate the ownership, transfer or possession of firearms.”

The court also concluded that firearms regulations are the prerogative of the state legislature, not of individual municipalities.

That makes sense to me, because, let’s say Lehighton were to adopt an ordinance banning weapons in public places, but neighboring Mahoning Township has no such ordinance, a person would become dizzy trying to figure out which municipalities did or did not have carry laws.

In another important ruling, Schneck v. Philadelphia, a lower court held that state law pre-empted a city ordinance requiring a license for the acquisition of a firearm within the city limits.

In a broader ruling in 2007, Clarke v. Pennsylvania House of Representatives, a state appellate court held that state law pre-empted several firearms-related ordinances approved by Philadelphia City Council that year.

These ordinances would have limited handgun purchases to one a month, mandated the reporting of lost or stolen firearms, required a local license to acquire a firearm or to bring one into Philadelphia, required annual renewal of the license, prohibited the possession or transfer of assault weapons and required anyone selling ammunition to report the purchase to police.

The following year, the National Rifle Association successfully challenged two Philadelphia ordinances that would have banned assault weapons and prohibited any person from acting as a “straw purchaser” by buying a handgun on behalf of an ineligible person.

That said, the courts have upheld ordinances that regulate firearms possession that is already unlawful. This would include carrying a weapon into a county courthouse in violation of an ordinance that forbids the possession of firearms in these facilities.

Each of the five counties in the Times News area requires anyone entering the courthouses in Jim Thorpe, Pottsville, Stroudsburg, Allentown or Easton to go through a metal detector and other screening requirements in an effort to detect prohibited items, such as handguns.

Because of the state law I mentioned earlier, however, municipalities cannot ban the legal carrying of guns on municipal property, and some local lawmakers fear this prohibition is a disaster waiting to happen.

Municipalities can, however, enact laws regulating the “unnecessary firing and discharge of firearms on highways and other public places.”

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com