A bill recognizing Ohioans' right to self-defense is on hold (again), due to the actions of Gov. Bob Taft, a few bureaucrats in the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and a few enablers in the Senate.

One of the main issues preventing a compromise is Taft/OSHP-sponsored language that would require people in vehicles with minor occupants to lock up their firearms. This Senate amendment has quickly become known as Taft's "Carjacker Protection" provision.

The most disgraceful part of the "Carjacker Protection" provision is that it is something that no anti-self-defense extremist demanded. Nor was the "Carjacker Protection" provision inserted to win any Senator's crucial vote. Rather, it was inserted only at the insistence of Gov. Taft and the OSHP.

At first they argued that a carry-in-a-car ban was necessary to protect the lives of law enforcement officers. But when we told Senators about a study by University of Georgia professor David Mustard, published in the Journal of Law and Economics, they were forced to change their tune. Mustard's study deals with the issue of risks to police from concealed handgun laws. His research indicated that concealed carry laws are the only gun laws associated with reduced police fatalities.

In order to promote their anti-self-defense agenda and convince Senators to adopt the amended language, Taft/OSHP resorted in an old, familiar trick: they claimed they're trying to save the kids.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

The Other Paper in Columbus this week ran this rather one-sided article...

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Without warning, begins the radio commercial, I can strike, shattering bone, tearing flesh. Crippling, disfiguring and paralyzing my victims. I don't discriminate. I don't care what color, creed, religion, shape, size, or even age a person is.

I could get your sister when she's sitting on your porch. Think you're safe at home? Think again. I can get your daughter or son walking to school. I can take your mother on her way home from the nail salon. I can drop your wife while she's pumping gas, just like that….

Hey, I'm a bullet, and that's my job.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

From WBNS in Columbus:

One man is in the hospital, another in jail, and a third on the loose after they tried to rob a Columbus drive-thru carryout.

The three men walked into the Lockbourne Express Drive-Thru wearing masks just after midnight, and attempted to rob the store. But two clerks were prepared for the attempt and pulled a gun out from behind the counter. One of the robbers was shot by a clerk.

He was taken to Grant Medical Center with extensive injuries, but none are life-threatening. A second robber was apprehended near the scene. Police are still searching for a third robber.

Columbus police report several robberies in the area in recent days.

Editor's Note:
Even the United States Congress recognizes the fact that "police cannot protect, and are not legally liable for failing to protect, individual citizens...", and that "citizens frequently must use firearms to defend themselves" - check out H.R. 648, and call your U.S. Representative to ask for their support!

Leaders in the Senate and representatives of the dominant political party in Ohio, take note:

Ohio's self defense rights activists, who are indeed some of the most active and numerous grassroots volunteers in Ohio politics, are speaking loudly and clearly in the days since HB12 was stalled. They have had it with the anti-self-defense actions of Bob Taft, and they are ready to take action against any legislators and a sympathetic media who enable him.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for still more letters to the editor, which reveal still again that the common Ohioan understands what Bob Taft refuses to acknowledge.

As we continue to examine the fall-out from two intense weeks of activity in Columbus on HB12, one thing has become readily apparent:

No Supreme Court ruling is necessary to enforce diversity among supporters of concealed carry reform.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

By Jim Siegel
Gannett Columbus Bureau

COLUMBUS - Ohio lawmakers once again failed to agree on a way to permit people to carry hidden weapons.

Here is an attempt to explain what's going on.

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Columbus Alive
June 26, 2003

Fired Up
by J. Caleb Mozzocco

It's only a matter of time, so maybe you should start getting used to the
idea now: Eventually, it will be completely legal to carry a concealed handgun in the state of Ohio, just as the founding fathers envisioned when they wrote the Second Amendment. Or as the National Rifle Association intended when they started lobbying legislators. Whichever.

Forty-four other states already have some form of concealed carry in place, and even in Ohio it's sort of legal to pack heat (as long as you can prove you have a good reason to, should you get busted). There's always a concealed-carry bill at some point in Ohio's legislative process, and one of
the biggest roadblocks to previous efforts seemingly crumbled recently.

The concealed-carry legislation craze began in the '80s, but Ohio's governors have kept it out of the law books so far. Former Governor George Voinovich promised to veto any bill that made it to his desk, and Governor Bob Taft had pledged to oppose any bill that law enforcement groups opposed.

When the Ohio Highway Patrol dropped its opposition in response to the Senate's tinkering with the latest concealed-carry bill (House Bill 12), so did Taft, and just last week it finally passed the Senate with a 22-10 vote. Now the two houses will have to hammer out a compromise, or just let the bill die and start all over again later.

With the Republican governor and Republican-controlled Senate on one side of
the debate, and the Republican-controlled House on the other, a concealed-carry bill of some sort seems inevitable. The only question remaining is just how
restrictive the law will be.

So where do liberals fit into the debate? Perhaps they should start by giving up their opposition and learning to embrace the gun.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

Or perhaps a better headline: "How Republican dominance in Columbus is actually preventing the recognition of Ohioans' right to self-defense"

The Ohio House has 62 Republican members, and the Senate has 22. To override a governor's veto, only 60 votes are needed in the House, and 20 in the Senate.

So why is the media reporting that the Senate's Republican leadership is allowing Bob Taft's veto-threat to hold Ohioans' right to self-defense hostage?

Click on the "Read More..." link below.

A new day?

In the 125th General Assembly, the Senate Republican caucus boasts a new Senate President (Doug White), and a new Judiciary Committee on Criminal Justice chairman (Steve Austria). Thanks, in part, to the efforts of the OFCC PAC, the Senate Republican caucus won a super-majority last November. So many find it hard to understand why HB12 has come to the same impass the Senate created with HB274 just 6 months ago.

Despite frequent warnings and the demise of HB274 for historical reference, the Senate's Republican leadership has done to HB12 exactly what the bill's sponsor warned them not to, on the day the House sent the bill to the Senate, by placing concerns over a veto-threat from Taft ahead of the Constitution.

"I think we have a greater threat and that is the constitutional question of the current law, which we have a duty as legislators to fix," Aslanides said in March, after the House's 69-28 vote.

When it comes to reforming the state's concealed carry laws, the buck stops with a few unelected state employees. This according to Republican leadership in the Ohio Senate, and Gov. Bob Taft.

According to media reports, Senate President Doug White has refused to appoint conferees to a committee to work out differences between the House and Senate's versions of HB12. He says the House needs to do it's negotiating with Gov. Taft. But Gov. Taft says he won't budge on his "Car-jacker Protection" provision because the Ohio State Highway Patrol wants it in the bill.

The end result is, Gov. Taft and the Senate are handing unelected bureaucrats absolute legislative authority when it comes to the self-defense rights of Ohioans.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

On June 20, the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Doug Clifton, wrote and published a column that contained about as much truth as we now know was contained in articles by New York Times reporter Jayson Blair.

Clifton told Plain Dealer readers that HB12 "exempts all gun licensing information from the state's open records laws" and that "the state wants to...prevent you from knowing ...a single thing about any part of this potentially lethal power."

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.