September 9, 2004
Port Clinton News Herald

Regarding your editorial "Cities should have right to ban guns in parks," I believe you have missed several important points.

Gun laws, like many other laws, need to be consistent across the state. That is why speed limits and traffic laws operate within certain guidelines across the state. Seatbelt laws designed to make us safer are consistent across the state. Hunting laws and fishing regulations are consistent across the state.

The above are examples of state law designed to protect the citizens or, in the case of hunting and fishing regulations, our wildlife resources. However, these all fall short of the full force of the Ohio Constitution. Out of all the examples, only the issue of self-defense and firearms is addressed in the Ohio Constitution, which grants Ohioans the right to bear arms for their security.

There should be no more sacred responsibility than a parent protecting and defending his or her family, whether at home or at a city park.

I regularly vacation in the Port Clinton area. My last visit was the week of July 5. I had the pleasure of fishing with Mayor Brown during Fish Ohio Day. I also attended Gov. Taft's press conference. As a concealed handgun license holder, a license issued by the State of Ohio, I carried my handgun where legal. That included the governor's press conference. It included walks along Port Clinton pier and visits to Magee Marsh and Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge.

I could not carry while dining at Nate's, Mel's Crow Nest or The Garden due to restrictions on carry where alcohol is served.

I hope that Reps. Wagner and Redfern plus state Sens. Mumper and Gardner continue to recognize and support the right of the law-abiding Ohioans to carry concealed handguns if we so choose regardless of where we travel and vacation in Ohio.

Larry S. Moore
Jamestown, Ohio

Mr. Moore is OFCC's Senate District 10 Coordinator.

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September 9, 2004
Springfield News Sun

WASHINGTON — Large populations of hunters and gun owners in Ohio and other battleground states could provide critical support in the close presidential election, the National Rifle Association's chief executive said Wednesday.

Candidates' stances on protecting gun rights could help attract enough voters to sway the election, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"This issue is worth several percentage points," he said. "It's a powerful issue at the polls on Election Day."

About one-fourth of the NRA's 4 million members live in West Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania — all battleground states with 101 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

It's this membership that the NRA plans to target through rallies, drives to register voters and a $400,000 weeklong television ad buy in several battleground states, LaPierre said.

The half-hour ads will begin running this week on Dayton stations WBDT and WKEF, according to a list the NRA provided to The AP. They will also run in TV stations in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia.

The ads, which mock Democrat John Kerry's attempts to portray himself as a hunter by highlighting his voting record, feature scenes from Ohio towns and interviews with Ohio Democrats who support Bush, such as Maple Heights, Ohio, councilwoman Barbara Lee Miami.

"I just don't have faith that Kerry can do the job," she said.

September 9, 2004

With only five days to go before the September 13th expiration of the
1994 Clinton gun ban, anti-gun activists across the nation are making a
last stand to re-enact this ineffective legislation. But now time is
running out. Congress is only in session three more days before the
sunset, and because time is short, anti-gunners will be redoubling their
efforts to extend the ban.

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Originally enacted in 1994, the Clinton crime bill banned gun ownership
by law-abiding citizens as the solution to violent crime. But anti-gun
politicians were only able to pass the portion of the law banning
military-style semi-automatic firearms after agreeing to "sunset" the
ban in a decade.

Proponents of the ban have not been able to offer a shred of evidence
over ten years that the Clinton gun ban has reduced crime. The National
Institute of Justice (NIJ) commissioned an independent study that
concluded, "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's
recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible
reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence." Even one
extremist gun ban group, the Violence Policy Center, has admitted that
continuing the ban will not "make one whit of difference one way or
another . . . if it doesn't pass, it doesn't pass." (National Public
Radio, 3/11/2004)

Since the gun banners are trying now to persuade Members of Congress to
renew the Clinton Gun Ban, we ask you to call, fax and e-mail your
Representative today. Urge your Member of Congress to publicly oppose
renewal of the ban and instead to support legislation that will actually
remove violent criminals from America's streets. Please urge your
family, friends and fellow hunters and shooters to do the same. Help
dismantle part of the anti-gun Clinton legacy by acting today!

Senate: (202) 224-3121
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

House: (202) 224-3121
http://www.house.gov/writerep/

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION INSTITUTE FOR LEGISLATIVE ACTION

P.S. Learn more about this very timely and important issue by clicking
on www.ClintonGunBan.com -- view the story and take the quiz.

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September 7, 2004
St. Paul Pioneer Press

by Mark Yost

As the rest of Minnesota's kids head back to school today, they'll participate in a wide-ranging curriculum that will readily teach them how to swim, how to drive, how to safely handle potent chemicals, how to balance their checkbook, even how to conjugate verbs in a dead language. What it won't teach them is what to do if they ever come across a gun.

In a culture obsessed with safety, this is a gaping hole in our public school curriculum. For while we can debate whether guns are good or bad until we're blue in the face, the undeniable fact is that guns are out there.

The exact numbers are hard to come by. Some estimates put gun ownership in Minnesota just shy of the national average of about 40 percent of households. Or you can take the estimated number of guns in circulation in the United States — about 200 million — and divide by 50 states and figure that there are roughly 4 million guns in Minnesota.

More exact statistics in the wake of the new concealed-carry law make it clear that gun safety isn't just a concern in rural areas. According to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, about 45 percent of all permits were issued in the metro area. There were 15,677 permits issued statewide from May 28 to Dec. 31, 2003; 7,132 of them were issued in five counties around the metro area.

I know the turnoff for some readers is that we're talking about guns, which have been unduly demonized in our culture. But think about the other dangers children face. Should schools only teach kids who have a pool or live by a lake how to swim? Should kids who are too young to drive not be taught about the dangers of crossing the street? And while abduction is statistically unlikely, don't we still teach our kids about "strangers"? Then why shouldn't our schools teach kids what to do if they happen upon a gun?

One hurdle to implementing objective gun safety programs seems to be the fact that the single largest gun safety educator in the United States is the National Rifle Association. Indeed, the organization the media love to hate provides the curriculum for the majority of hunter safety courses around the country. It also offers a K-12 curriculum called the Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program.

The New York Times and others have deemed Eddie Eagle akin to Joe Camel, nothing more than a marketing tool to lure young minds into the "gun culture." Nothing could be further from the truth.

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

Despite being an "expert" on guns and crime, Michael Moore now says he learned the facts about arming citizens and crime reduction only after he made his anti-gun movie:

"After I made Bowling for Columbine, I discovered that Israel has one of the lowest levels of violence -- I mean, besides the conflict with the Palestinians -- even though there are so many guns around."

(Admissions like this cause one to wonder what facts he will admit to having learned about the war on terror in the years after the making of Fahrenheit 9/11.)

So let's get this straight. Moore would have us believe he never heard that a well-armed armed citizenry does not increase crime even ONCE during the making of his so-called documentary on gun ownership in America?

Sorry Mikey, but we ain't buyin' it.