A Georgia mayor on Wednesday stood by an ordinance prohibiting guns in unlocked vehicles after a state judge issued a ruling declaring it unconstitutional.
The policy, which has been challenged by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, requires firearms left in vehicles to be “securely stored” in compartments or in a locked trunk.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said the city would continue to enforce the ordinance after Chatham County Recorder’s Court Judge Brian Huffman Jr. handed down a ruling siding with Clayton Papp, who had appealed a citation for violating the ordinance. And the mayor promised to appeal the decision to the Superior Court, in comments to the Savannah Morning News.
“Our position remains firmly grounded in long-established legal precedent: the City is regulating the use and operation of the vehicle—not the firearm itself, which Georgia citizens are lawfully entitled to possess,” Johnson said.
“We’ve had this in existence now for quite some time, and we have reduced the number of guns stolen from unlocked vehicles in Savannah,” he told reporters.
Savannah appears to hold power to continue to enforce the ordinance because Huffman’s ruling likely only applies to Papp’s case due to the challenge being raised as part of a criminal defense and not a broader lawsuit seeking an injunction to stop further enforcement, according to Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor.
“In theory, the city could continue to enforce the ordinance and leave it to individual defendants to raise this question again as a defense,” Kreis told the Associated Press.
Johnson has said he backs the policy as a way to promote responsible gun ownership without infringing on Second Amendment rights. He said this week that the number of guns stolen from unlocked cars reported to Savannah police dipped from more than 200 in 2023 to just over 100 this year after the ordinance was instituted with unanimous support from the Savannah City Council in 2024.
In his ruling Wednesday, which Carr hailed as “a major victory for law-abiding gun owners,” Huffman said Savannah’s ordinance was “void and unenforceable.”
“Concerns over firearms stolen from vehicles and later used in violent crime are, in fact, concerning,” the judge wrote. “Good intentions, however, do not immunize legislation from constitutional scrutiny.”
Huffman’s ruling said Georgia’s law states that when a firearm is placed in a vehicle, whether the owner is present or has stepped away, the gun remains within the owner’s possession — it does not differentiate between “possession” and “storage.”
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The city’s ordinance differentiates “possession” from “storage,” and aims to govern the storage of a firearm while in a car parked locally, the judge continued, stating that the policy violates a state law that prohibits local governments from regulating “the possession, ownership, transport, (or) carrying” of firearms.”
Since the ordinance was established last year, the Savannah Police Department has issued 41 citations, the mayor said during his State of the City address last week.