COLUMBUS, Ohio — The city has filed a lawsuit against the state, challenging a bill approved in December that it says makes it more difficult for cities to pass legislation in regard to firearms.

According to WCMH Channel 4, the lawsuit argues that House Bill 228 favors the gun lobby and violates the Ohio Constitution’s Home Rule provision.

“The State of Ohio has gone out of its way to make it more difficult for cities to govern themselves, especially on issues like guns," Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein tells ABC 6.

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther tells 10tv.com that 74 of the 102 homicides in the city in 2018 involved firearms. The city later passed laws it hoped would curb gun violence, but it says the state bill blocks the city’s efforts.

“We took painstakingly significant efforts to narrowly tailor a law to make sure that we acted within what the state of Ohio would allow cities to do,” Klein says. “In this instance, it was to ban bump stocks in our community, and it was also to, which I think is the most common sense as it comes, to keep guns out of the hands of domestic violence convicts.”

Gerard Valentino of the Buckeye Firearms Foundation tells 10tv.com that he believes the city is wasting its money with the lawsuit and that it will lose in court.

“If I was a citizen of the city of Columbus, I would be upset that they are chasing a situation that they know they are going to lose, instead of spending that money on enforcing the gun laws that exist," Valentino says.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost tells ABC 6 he will defend the state in the lawsuit, saying he believes legislators acted constitutionally.