Why I Am Preparing to Challenge Lorain’s New Weapons Ordinance: A Plaintiff’s Perspective
Lorain resident and investigative journalist Aaron Christopher Knapp explains why he and two other plaintiffs are preparing to challenge the City’s 2025 weapons-ordinance overhaul, arguing it conflicts with Ohio law and exceeds municipal authority.
INTRODUCTION
In early 2025, the City of Lorain passed a sweeping revision of Chapter 549, its local code on weapons and explosives. It was labeled an emergency measure. It was rushed through. It was sold to the public as a simple update.
But it was not simple, and it was not an update.
What Council enacted was a set of local rules that reach far beyond what Ohio law allows. The new ordinance creates criminal classifications that conflict with state statutes, invents concealed handgun license consequences that municipalities cannot impose, and delegates power to the Chief of Police that no legislative body has the authority to hand out.
I am one of the plaintiffs preparing to challenge this ordinance. I am not doing this lightly. I am not doing it for political theater. I am doing it because Ohio law says the City cannot do what it just did. When the law is clear and the government refuses to follow it, the residents harmed by that overreach have the right and the obligation to push back.
This is my explanation, in plain terms, of why I am preparing to take this challenge into the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas.
WHY I AM A PLAINTIFF
I live here. I vote here. I follow the law here. I carry the responsibilities of citizenship here. I also investigate government actions for a living, and I have spent years documenting how local agencies bend rules when it suits them and ignore rules when they become inconvenient.
This ordinance is another example.
As a resident and as a journalist, I reviewed the law myself. I spoke with legal counsel. I researched the state statutes. I read the Ohio Supreme Court decisions. I compared Lorain’s language to state law line by line. And it became very clear that if we do not challenge this ordinance now, Lorain will establish a precedent that reaches into areas no municipality is allowed to touch.
Nothing in this challenge is personal. I do not benefit financially. I am not pushing any political ideology. I am asserting a basic legal principle: when the state occupies a field of law, the City cannot rewrite it.
THE CORE ISSUE: LORAIN CANNOT DO WHAT IT DID
Ohio has a statewide firearms regulatory system. It has licensing statutes. It has misdemeanor classifications for weapons offenses. It has clearly defined penalty levels. It has rules for what the sheriff can do and what a court can do.
Lorain tried to redo all of that.
The ordinance elevates misdemeanors beyond state levels. The ordinance broadens definitions the state already controls. The ordinance incorporates licensing consequences tied to R.C. 2923.128, something only the state can enforce. The ordinance hands the Chief of Police the power to shape weapons regulations through internal rule-making.
I am a plaintiff because I witnessed all of this happen without transparency, without explanation, and without regard for binding state law.
CHL AUTHORITY: A LINE THE CITY CANNOT CROSS
This section of the ordinance is one of the most important reasons I agreed to be a plaintiff.
Ohio law is clear. Concealed handgun license suspension and revocation fall under the authority of the sheriff and the courts. Not the City. Not the police department. Not local council.
The state sets the criteria. The state sets the penalties. The state defines the violations.
Yet Lorain passed an ordinance referencing R.C. 2923.128(A)(2), attempting to expand who can trigger CHL consequences and under what circumstances. This is not a “local update.” It is a direct attempt to create a licensing disability that state law has not created.
As a plaintiff, I cannot allow my city to create a licensing framework it has no authority to establish. If a city can do this, any city can do this. That is exactly the patchwork R.C. 9.68 was passed to prevent.
THE PREEMPTION ARGUMENT: THE STATE OCCUPIES THE FIELD
I want readers to understand something that has guided this entire challenge. This is not about interpretation. This is not about preference. This is not about political disagreement.
The Ohio Supreme Court has already ruled that cities cannot create weapons laws that conflict with state law. Twice. In cases decided over a decade apart.
The General Assembly wrote R.C. 9.68 specifically to stop the problem of every city inventing its own firearms code. Without that statute, a traveler could commit a crime by crossing an invisible line from one municipality into another. That is unconstitutional and unlawful.
Lorain’s new ordinance recreates the very problem the legislature eliminated. That is why I am a plaintiff.
WHY THIS MATTERS AS A CITIZEN AND A JOURNALIST
For years, Lorain has struggled with consistency and transparency in its enforcement of the law. This ordinance is not an isolated event. It is part of a pattern. When the city wants something, it moves fast and pushes hard, even when the law says otherwise. When residents ask questions or seek clarity, the process slows or stops.
This challenge is not a fight for or against weapons regulations. It is a fight to make the City follow the rules everyone else has to follow. If Lorain can rewrite state law through local emergency legislation, then the entire premise of a statewide legal system collapses.
As a plaintiff, I am putting my name on this because I believe in the rule of law more than I fear political backlash.
WHAT COMES NEXT
The filings are drafted. The exhibits are organized. The legal framework is complete. The challenge will be filed once counsel makes the final determination that everything is ready for submission.
Until then, this article is my public explanation of why I stepped forward, what the ordinance does, and why the law requires a challenge.
Nothing in this article contains legal advice. Nothing in this article discloses privileged communications. I am speaking only to what is public, what is factual, and what is at stake for the residents of Lorain.
FINAL THOUGHT
I did not become a plaintiff because I wanted to. I became a plaintiff because the law left me no other responsible choice. When a government ignores limits placed on it by the Constitution and the legislature, the citizens affected have two options. They can stay silent, or they can stand up.
I chose to stand up.
And when this challenge enters court, it will not be about politics. It will be about the law. It will be about the rights of Lorain residents. And it will be about making sure that our city does not place itself above the statutes that govern it.
LEGAL & AI DISCLAIMERS
This article is based solely on publicly available information and general legal context. Nothing here is legal advice. Nothing here reflects confidential attorney-client communications. All litigation decisions, strategies, and filings remain under the exclusive control of licensed legal counsel.
BYLINE
Written by
Aaron Christopher Knapp
Investigative Journalist, Plaintiff, and Editor
Lorain Politics Unplugged / ACK Unplugged
About The Author
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Being included and served with this email I feel that I have an obligation to respond, so I respond accordingly:
I must respectfully disagree that : “The Lorain Law Department is worthless. And City Council was stupid enough to vote this into law. Your city leaders are absolutely morons, IMHO.”
I prefer to believe that a properly functioning Lorain Law Department is invaluable to the public and I cite the Administration of Law Director Michael J. Scherach, Esq. as an example of such functional excellence. While not perfect, it strived to uphold the Constitution and protect law abiding citizens and taxpayers. It held government and its officers accountable to legal and constitutional standards.
I prefer and believe to think that City Council has embarrassed itself in these missteps as it was misled by politicians who opined that they had power and authority that they could exercise without regard to their status as a statutory body politic. They were misinformed and hoodwinked.
An unconstitutional law is no law whatsoever. It has no authority as it doesn’t exist. It is void ab initio. From its genesis, its inception, at its very beginning, it amounts to nothing. It is meaningless as it doesn’t exist and cannot be recognized as valid.
Yet, this is what the current occupants of the Lorain law department’s staff and leadership has produced and misrepresented as proper for City Council to pass as an emergency. HOW CAN THIS BE? Heads should roll. Firings are deserved.
It is beyond comprehension that such legal malpractice has been committed against the members of Lorain City Council, the Citizens of Lorain, and those expecting a uniform formation and enforcement of law in Ohio!
They should be ashamed of this work propagated and put forth as their work product.
I call upon each staff member to acknowledge their participation in this unconstitutional debacle and speak up and out against this unconstitutional ordinance.
City leaders being misled should not without proper cause be called unearned names, however, basic Constitutional principles should have been invoked as it shouldn’t have been too much to ask to have some debate over whether precedent existed on the Second Amendment litigation in Ohio and America.
It seems evident that whether bamboozled by bullshit or just mislead by false premises of socialist ideology advanced by democrat office holders, that the unconstitutional result has occurred by a unified and unanimous vote of Lorain City Council without a peep from any alleged scrutinizing public official of the unconstitutional nature of this ordinance. That should be and is most troubling and shocking to anyone watching the functioning of government!
We may have a cabal and sect of functioning communist embryos developing right here in Lorain, Ohio? If true, what a sad day for Ohio and America. 🇺🇸! Shameful and sad that lawmakers have no desire to uphold their oaths of office and guard and protect the Constitutions applicable to government.
What choice do WE THE PEOPLE have but to seek the declaration of this Ordinance invalid as an abridgment of our Constitution? Additionally, we must hold these officeholders accountable for their illegality and unconstitutional actions and behaviors.
The cabal of anti-American politicians seeking a foothold in Lorain County, Ohio must be condemned and identified as budding members of a sect of Constitutional perversity that is incapable of co-existence with American expectations and values fundamental to our Republic form of government.
Has such a cabal’s representative infiltrated our Local Common Pleas Courts?
Will the Bill of Rights, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Ohio Constitution be respected and upheld in our local Courts?
We shall see.
Gargasz, Robert J.
A concerned Lorain Citizen