A suit challenging the legality of a batch of Harrisburg gun control ordinances - and maybe other similar challenges across Pennsylvania - gained new life with the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Thursday.

In a new ruling, the court found that a gun owners’ group and several individual members that are fighting the city regulations do have standing to challenge most of the ordinances. That is a reversal of a 2018 decision by Dauphin County Judge Andrew Dowling.

The court’s 7-0 ruling also reverses its own past decisions that have shielded some local gun ordinances from similar lawsuits under the argument that plaintiffs had not been prosecuted under their terms and therefore could show no harm.

Writing for the majority, Judge Kevin Brobson noted that the appellants here "have no real alternative to address their grievance. They can curb their conduct to conform to the ordinances’ mandates or they can willfully violate the law and face criminal prosecution...

“It makes little sense to wait for appellants to break the law, which we presume they do not want to do, before they can challenge it,” Brobson concluded.

The new ruling permits the Harrisburg lawsuit to proceed on ordinances that:

Bar anyone under the age of 18 from carrying a gun in public unless they are accompanied by an adult.

Prohibiting the shooting of any guns by the public within the city limits for any purpose other than self-defense.

Require gun owners to report to police any loss or theft of a gun within 48 hours of discovery.

Bar the possession or firing of guns in city parks.

The ordinances are not new; all date back to 2009 or earlier, according to court filings. But Mayor Eric Papenfuse has ordered Harrisburg police to enforce them as a way to show residents that city leaders are hearing their concerns about gun violence.

Most of the penalties in the ordinances are far less than anyone committing a gun crime would already face - as summary citations, punishments would be capped at 90 days in prison and fines ranging from $50 to $1,000.

But advocates for gun owners’ rights here and elsewhere have been on a crusade to stamp out the local ordinances across the state, arguing in part that they stand in violation of a 1995 law that reserves regulation of guns in Pennsylvania to the state government.

The Harrisburg suit was brought by the state chapter of Firearm Owners Against Crime, as well as Josh First, a city resident, and Howard Bullock, who commutes into Harrisburg daily for work. Both First and Bullock are members of Firearm Owners Against Crime.

The case will now be remanded to Dauphin County for argument on the merits, though both sides also have the ability to ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to review Thursday’s decision.

Attempts to reach attorneys for the city were not immediately successful.

Joshua Prince, who is representing FOAC, First and Bullock, said “this is a very large decision" for gun owners, because the court as a whole has stated that standing in contesting these ordinances no longer relies on proof of a prior prosecution.

Prince said should help his clients’ causes in battles here and in other places, like Pittsburgh, where a similar challenge is playing out against local gun ordinances passed in the wake of last year’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in the city.