The city of Cincinnati won a temporary victory in its lawsuit against the state of Ohio over gun regulations Thursday.
Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Jennifer Branch issued a preliminary injunction limiting a 2019 state law prohibiting municipalities from passing most gun regulations.
"Evidence and testimony presented to the Court clearly establishes the detriment of Amended R.C. 9.68 [the 2019 law] to public safety in the city," Branch wrote in the injunction, finding that the Ohio law violates Cincinnati's so-called home rule authority.
The city has seen an uptick in gun violence in recent years, with 84 gun-related homicides in 2020, 82 in 2021 and 61 in 2022. The city says at least 38 children have been shot in 2023 alone.
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The city filed its first lawsuit against the state law in 2019, when lawmakers amended a so-called "preemption law" to make it even more difficult for municipalities to pass their own gun restrictions.
Republican state lawmakers say the preemption law keep municipalities from infringing on Ohioans' Second Amendment rights. But cities like Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland say the law makes it impossible to combat gun violence.
The latest version of the city's lawsuit dates to January of this year, after private residents sued the city over two ordinances council approved related to guns. One required residents to store firearms safely. Another restricted gun ownership for those convicted of domestic violence.
"Those kinds of common-sense gun laws, and so many more that we would like to introduce, we are prohibited from doing because of the overreach from Columbus," Mayor Aftab Pureval said Thursday at a news conference about the injunction.
Cincinnati Police Chief Theresa Theetge agreed, saying the city's gun restrictions helped officers do their jobs.
"Nobody knows how to reduce gun violence in Cincinnati better than Cincinnati," she said. "What this does for us now is to be able to take those efforts and move them forward to reduce the gun violence in our city."
Pureval says city efforts to curb gun violence will continue as the lawsuit plays out.
"While we have this injunction and the state law enforcement is paused, we'll consider our options to continue to move the ball forward in keeping our residents safe," he said.