Board of Game Commissioners, 071331 PAAGO, AGO 14

• Case Date: July 13, 1931
• Court: Pennsylvania

Board of Game Commissioners AGO 14 Opinion No. 14 Pennsylvania Attorney General Opinions Opinions of The Attorney General July 13, 1931          Firearms—Possession of, bi; Foreign-born Resident—City Ordinance—Game Law Act of 1923, P. L. 35'J.          When a city or borough ordinance provides a penalty for violation on the same subject as that which has been regulated by statute, the statute Is paramount, and the proceeding for violation under the ordinance must abate          Board of Game Commissioners, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.          Gentlemen: You ask to be advised whether the City of Pittston may recover a fine for violation of a city ordinance prohibiting an unnaturalized foreign-born resident within the city to own or be in possession of a shot-gun, rifle, pistol or other firearms. The ordinance to which you make reference was passed by the city council April 6, 1931. An examination of the ordinance will disclose that the four sections of which it is comprised, are almost verbatim reproductions of Sections 902, 903 and 904 of the Game Law Act of 1923, P. L. 359. The ordinance attaches precisely the same penalty provided by the statute.          The passage of such ordinance would be an attempt by the city to usurp the prerogatives of the Legislature in the imposition of a fine where the Legislature had previously occupied the entire field upon the subject of such violation. Does a municipality have such authority? Two laws should not run concurrently when each has attached to it a penalty for a violation—that is, no one should be twice punished for the same offense. Such conditions could arise only under a dual sovereignty, as for example our State and Federal Governments. The State is sovereign because it represents the will of the people. The Federal Government is sovereign because the States have yielded to it certain of their powers of sovereignty, whereby both have inherent powers and both may legislate. But in the case of a state on one hand and a city or other municipality on the other, the former is the creator and the latter is the creature. The one is necessarily dominant and the other servient. The people as a body constitute the sovereignty of a state. The municipality through its council derives its powers from the state; hence it possesses and may exercise only such powers as are vested in it by the sovereignty, the will of the people of the state.

"A municipal corporation is merely an agency instituted by the

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