There's been a lot of adulation thrown at the new mayor, but this is really awesome.

Mayor Nutter yesterday said he would enforce new city gun-control laws even without state authorization to do so - setting up a possible legal and political showdown between the state and the new mayor.

State preemption of our city's ability to deal with its own problems is itself a big problem. Until Michael Nutter just stood up and said enough, the loudest voice was probably our own Dan UA. Dan has called out the state's messing with: our smoking ban, our right to control our own zoning, our progressive anti-predatory lending bill (more than once), our campaign finance bill, and the effect of all this preemption on the casino fight. Oh yeah, and guns.

PS there's totally more but I got tired of hyperlinking.

Anyway, of all this state hand-tying, the refusal to let us deal with our gun problem is compounded by the fact that the state won't deal with it either. The laws we are talking about here are some of the same ones that Rendell begged (with 'clenched teeth' and 'pounding the lectern') the legislature to pass:

The bills would force owners to immediately report stolen guns; set monthly limits for firearms purchases; require vendors to report ammunition sales; and prohibit gun sales to anyone who is the subject of an order of protection.

They wouldn't.

So this is how it is going to work:

At the first regular meeting of the new City Council yesterday, Council members Darrell L. Clarke and Donna Reed Miller introduced the same package of gun-control measures that languished last year while the state legislature refused to authorize them.

But these bills have a new wrinkle - they don't call for state-enabling legislation. The previous bills were conditional on companion state laws in recognition of a 1996 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that said cities could not enforce their own gun laws.

But Nutter, Clarke and Miller, frustrated by the repeated failure of gun-control measures in the legislature, now appear ready to do just that.

"If these bills pass and if I sign them, then I expect to enforce them," Nutter said. "If you believe we can have a safer city by putting these measures in place, I think as good public servants we are compelled to take some type of action in the face of no relief coming from anywhere else."

And now that we have a newly Democratic state supreme court (thanks to the election efforts of a lot of you!):

[Temple law professor and totally awesome lawyer David] Kairys said the city's action could set up a test of a new Supreme Court, now under Chief Justice Ronald Castille, the former Philadelphia district attorney who promised to depoliticize the court.

"If there's really going to be a new day in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, this would be a fine place to start," Kairys said.

Now I know that this can't stop the shootings and all the bloodletting on its own. And there has been some troubling evidence that the new day might have shadows of the old (see, e.g., Clarena Tolson).

But this, no question this is a huge symbolic leap into a new day. And, as Dan has, you know, detailed, it has implications for all sorts of progressive law-making.