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A day after Cleveland City Council passed a new set of gun restrictions, a gun rights advocacy group filed suit against the city, arguing that the ordinance violates state law.

(Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A gun rights advocacy group sued the city of Cleveland Tuesday, arguing that the city's newly adopted gun control ordinance -- including a provision that creates a gun offender registry -- flies in the face of a 2010 Ohio Supreme Court ruling that state gun laws trump local ones.

In the suit, filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, Ohioans for Concealed Carry requested an injunction against the city from enforcing the new law, which City Council passed Monday night. (Read the complaint in the document viewer below.)

Some of the provisions in the legislation mirror state law, including prohibitions against using a gun while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, defacing a gun's serial number or allowing a minor to use a gun without supervision.

Others are unique to the city, including a requirement that gun offenders register with the city's safety department within five days of either being released from prison or moving to Cleveland. The law also requires an owner to report a lost or stolen gun to police. And a person who sells or transfers a gun, but is not a licensed gun dealer, must report those transactions.

Mayor Frank Jackson says the legislation will encourage responsible gun ownership and help prevent firearms from ending up in the hands of criminals.

But Ohioans for Concealed Carry contends in its complaint that state law prohibits local municipalities from crafting their own laws to regulate a person's right to possess, purchase, sell, transfer, transport, store or keep firearms or their components. And the Ohio Supreme Court already has told the city that the state statute nullifies the city's gun restrictions, according to the suit.

The city of Cleveland challenged the state law in 2007, arguing that it violates the home rule provision of the Ohio Constitution that allows communities to enact local rules and regulations as long as they do not conflict with general state laws.

At the time, Cleveland had about a half-dozen firearms provisions that were stricter than the uniform gun law that the state passed in 2006.

Every firearm in the city had to be registered, no one could openly carry a gun, and assault rifles and shotguns were banned.

But in 2010, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the state's concealed-firearms law, noting that it is "a general law that displaces municipal firearm ordinances and does not unconstitutionally infringe on municipal home rule authority."

Jeff Garvas, president of Ohioans for Concealed Carry, said in an interview Tuesday that when Jackson first proposed the new city law in July, Garvas sent Cleveland Law Director Barbara Langhenry a letter telling her that she has a legal responsibility to advise the mayor against it.

Garvas said he received no response.

"They were told five years ago that they were not permitted to have local arms ordinances," Garvas said. "Everything they had, from gun registration to assault weapons bans, had to be removed. The mayor went on TV and stomped his feet and said 'This isn't fair, and this is unrealistic.' The fact that they're doing it all over again is mind-boggling."

Garvas said he believes the city is attempting to pass off the new ordinance as a solution to the city's violence epidemic.

City Councilman Zack Reed, the only council member who voted against the legislation Monday, agreed.

"The administration's original argument was that this is supposed to address violence," Reed said in an interview Tuesday. "But even the advocates of the legislation now agree that it will do nothing to deal with that problem. All the money that we will spend on promoting this ordinance and enforcing it would be better invested in more and better trained police officers."

Councilman Matt Zone, who chairs Council's Safety Committee, said in an interview Tuesday that the legal challenge was expected, but he believes the ordinance will hold up.

"We are a charter home-rule city," Zone said. "It is in our right to enact laws that make sense for the city of Cleveland. We knew this was a possibility, but we were careful to create something that is unique to Cleveland and is complementary to the state code."

Zone could not explain how the new ordinance differs from the ones the Ohio Supreme Court nullified in 2010.

A city spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The lawsuit also asks the court to force the city to comply with a public records request for the inventory of guns collected during the city's buyback programs.

The complaint includes, as exhibits, several years worth of requests for the information, to which, Garvas said, the city has never responded.