By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
AP Statehouse Correspondent

COLUMBUS (AP) -- Gov. Bob Taft's promise to veto a concealed weapons bill reflects political considerations that go beyond the Republican Party.

Taft has long been uneasy about giving Ohioans the right to carry a concealed gun. At first he refused to support legislation without the backing of law enforcement groups.

This fall, as that opposition fell away in the face of several compromises to the bill, he added a new requirement: The public should have some access to the names of permit holders.

The Legislature passed a concealed weapons bill last week.

Taft, who is barred by law from seeking a third term, is acting in the context of a still politically diverse state, said Alex Lamis, a Case Western Reserve University political analyst.

"When Taft does things that seem to be against the Republican majority in the Legislature, he's responding to the fact that the state as a whole is not overwhelmingly Republican," Lamis said. "There's a lot of diversity there."

Although Ohio supported President Bush in the 2000 election, for example, he defeated Al Gore by only four percentage points, and only after Gore abandoned Ohio in the closing weeks to focus on other Midwestern states.

And while Republicans dominate the Legislature and all statewide offices, Democrats hold the mayor's seat in most major cities, including Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.

Taft's opposition angers concealed weapons supporters and doesn't make sense to them politically.

"He's doing these things on the eve of trying to get President Bush re-elected," said Chad Baus, a spokesman for Ohioans for Concealed Carry. "To some extent, conservatives are looking around and saying, 'Where do we go? I'm not being represented by this guy."'

Bob Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, dismisses such concerns.

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'Tis the season for Taft veto

By William Hershey
COLUMBUS BUREAU
Dayton Daily News

December 13, 2003

COLUMBUS -- Peace at the Statehouse? Good will toward fellow Republicans? Bah, humbug.'

It should be the season to be jolly for Gov. Bob Taft, House Speaker Larry Householder, Senate President Doug White, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and the rest of the Republican crew.

All their seasons should be full of ho-ho-hos.

They've got more control of state government than Santa has of his reindeer. But these days they don't spend much time walking under each other's mistletoe.

Taft says he'll veto the bill passed by the House and Senate giving law-abiding Ohioans the right to carry concealed weapons. It should provide more public access to information about permit holders, the governor says.

The veto threat is a lump of coal in the stockings of advocates -- including big crowds of Republicans from Akron to Zanesville, not to mention Moraine -- who've been pushing for the right to carry concealed handguns for 20 years, at least.

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In the past few days, the same sorry cast of newspaper editors who helped Taft tote open records water in the first place, and who were given access to the concealed carry license database in the HB12 Conference Report, have issued editorials complaining that it's still not enough.

We've often used the analogy that open records would allow a reporter to harass a sheriff's office with gargantuan jobs like researching every name in a phone book to find out who has CCW licenses (and guns). Some have thought us silly. But this reporter has just admitted he would do just that if the bill had been written to Taft's liking.

Gun bill shot down by an unlikely bullet

Dec. 14, 2003
By Jim Siegel

Hard to believe that after years of debate over training, trigger locks, affirmative defense, fingerprinting, vehicle and building restrictions, and gun permits for fugitives, the issue that may bring down the gun bill -- public records -- wasn't even brought up until November.

Gov. Bob Taft plans to veto the concealed handgun bill because it does not do enough to open permitting records to the public. Lawmakers agreed only to allow journalists -- a loosely defined term -- to obtain those records, if they ask for specific names.

Those opposed to making those records completely public say that illegal firearms dealers could get a ready-made list of gun owners, allowing them to break into those homes and steal guns.

But not only does this elevate these criminals to a level of sophistication they very likely do not possess, it also assumes they would be willing to risk breaking into homes to steal one gun at a time.

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