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Unless it's a constitutional issue, that's exactly the way laws should be. Local.
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State constitution preemption of knife laws would make it a state constitutional issue.
We have state preemption to make uniform laws because we want uniform laws. This is a double edged sword, of course, since state law could also go bad. One political advantage of letting cities have some autonomy there is it reduced the political need to "do something" at the state level. The big city dummies would pass whatever they wanted and mostly only the people there were effected. However, it could be said that also made people that didn't live in the cities not care and not get involved. Lots of pros and cons either way.
Even if it's not a "state constitutional issue", it's unreasonable to expect average people to keep up with all the dopey variations in local laws, 88 counties, 277 cities (approx) that can change day to day. I'd expect an average person to be able to understand clearly written state laws that don't change frequently, and that actually have to do with crimes of violence, not things the law says are "bad" because some mentally ill Karen screamed for it. Those local laws can sometimes apply to everyone passing through, not just residents.
Yes, some variation is needed to deal with local conditions, e.g., studded tires mandatory in one place vs banned in another. That's hardly what your philosophy should be based on.