Ranson Withdrawals Illegal Ordinance

There was an attempt to pass an illegal city ordinance in the eastern-panhandle city of Ranson late last month. Basically, The Ranson City Council proposed an ordinance on June 17th that would have made it illegal for anyone (even those with a valid CPL) to carry a firearm onto any city property. According to The Journal (Martinsburg):

“A fellow showed up at a recreational event and apparently he or she had a gun and frankly we did not have the means by which to, no law saying they couldn’t have a gun,” Mayor A. David Hamill said.
The man did have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but agreed to remove the gun from the public field. The council now wants to enact an ordinance that would allow the city to prohibit people from carrying firearms on public property owned by the city.
...“The state code allows you to pass an ordinance like this but you have to have an ordinance in order to enforce it,” said city attorney Andy Blake, who drafted the proposed ordinance.

Well, the problem with that is WV Code § 8-12-5a (1999) preempts county and local governments from making firearms laws that are more restrictive then the WV State Code. Since WV laws only specify a few government buildings (like courthouses) as gun-free zones, the city of Ranson has no legal right to further restrict the carrying of firearms.
After pressure from the West Virginia Citizens Defence League, the city of Ranson dropped the proposed ordinance from their agenda. WVCDL president Jim Mullins and other gun rights supports attended the next city council meeting on July 1st to express their thanks for the city dropping the ordinance.
But this may just be the tip of the iceberg. According to the WVCDL:

In the course of investigating this issue, we have found that several other cities may be violating the preemption law, emboldened, in part, by the poor drafting our current preemption law contains. For the last two years, WVCDL has had bills introduced in the Legislature (2007 SB 715 & 2008 SB 732) to substantially strengthen the preemption law and bring all state & local government agencies under its coverage.

According to the same story in The Journal cited above:

"(Ranson's ordinance was) the same type of ordinance that (city attorney Andy) Blake wrote for the city of Martinsburg that is now enforced. The ordinance itself uses the same exact language as the state code but the phrase 'government entities' was replaced with the 'city of Ranson'."

 While no reports of actual enforcement of the Martinsburg ordinance have been found through an Internet search, it is obvious that just the existence of this ordinance is in violation of the state code.