A couple of table's worth of deadly eye candy was laid out for TV cameras at Cleveland Police Headquarters yesterday. Mayor Frank Jackson said this collection of Uzis, automatic rifles, and six-inch shells are now legal to carry on city streets.
Frank Jackson: We're not talking about something that's academic, we're talking about what's going on on the ground in the neighborhoods in the city of Cleveland.
The mayor cited a number of current Cleveland gun laws that he said would be pre-empted by a revision of state code that went into effect Wednesday. It's another case of a continuing struggle by the city to maintain what local officials see as its right to enforce its own laws - also known as home rule. Law Director Robert Triozzi feels confident about the city's weapons restrictions.
Robert Triozzi: None of these local laws are in conflict with state law.
Jim Irvine: He's wrong.
Jim Irvine, who heads the Buckeye Firearms Association, says the new state ruling trumps anything now in place in Cleveland.
Jim Irvine: He is enforcing a local law that is not a state law that's not uniform across the state, so it's not a valid law.
The final verdict - or at least the next verdict - will come in the court of Common Pleas judge Timothy McGinty. David C. Barnett, 90.3.