By Chad D. Baus

Last summer, voters in Ohio's 2nd Congressional District who make their decisions based on gun rights were given two good choices - former State Rep. Jean Schmidt (R) faced off against Iraq War vet Paul Hackett (D), in a special election to fill a seat vacated when President Bush appointed then-Congressman Rob Portman as U.S. Trade Representative.

The National Rifle Association decided it saw enough of a difference between the candidates and endorsed Schmidt, who eventually won 52%-48%, a margin of victory less than typical for Republicans in the district. The results of this special election continue to reverberate, from political blogs debating Democrats' chances of regaining state and federal legislative majorities in 2006 to the halls of Congress and debate on the war in Iraq.

But in the effort to read the tea leaves about why this race was closer than some expected, a misunderstanding about Schmidt’s record on support for gun rights has begun to creep into the national lexicon, and it deserves to be addressed.

On November 26, 2005, conservative columnist Robert Novak, famous of late for a 2003 column which sparked the Valerie Plame-CIA agent controversy, made the following claim:

Schmidt nearly lost the special election because of lukewarm support from conservatives, who disliked her voting record in the Ohio legislature on gun control issues.

Indeed, Novak could be correct that there was concern among conservatives over her record on gun rights, which indeed could also explain why Hackett was able to draw as close as he did to Schmidt in this conservative district. But up until a recent Buckeye Firearms Association investigation, the source for voters’ misperception on this issue was somewhat of a mystery.

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By Mark Noble

Recently, WBNS 10TV (Columbus) reporter James Black reported that the Ohio State University has changed the way it reports campus crime statistics to track closer to the minimum standard set forth by the U.S. Department of Education.

From the story:

Under new U.S. Department of Education guidelines, universities are no longer required to keep track of off-campus crime.

But is the new standard giving students a false sense of security?

"If you compare this most recent Clery Report with what we have filed in the past, it appears that crime is going down. And what I have said in the past is that may not necessarily be the case,” OSU Assistant Police Chief Rich Amweg said.

This might not seem like a big deal, but consider a parent or student using this report of a barometer of campus safety. The new reporting methods serve only to understate crime, and if the crime rate isn’t viewed as a problem then the campus community can brush away suggestions on improvements to the universities crime prevention strategies.

The OSU Police Department can’t even seem to decide which areas to report on. On page 11 of the latest OSU 2004 Crime Report, they refer to a map of the “immediate campus area” which includes campus, all of Columbus Police Department’s 4th Precinct and some of the 1st Precinct as well. Somehow, despite the massive chunk of the city illustrated in the map, the crime numbers are astoundingly low. Zero aggravated assaults, 11 robberies on campus, and 5 reported on “public property”. This looks pretty safe.

But looking back a few years shows a disturbing trend. There were 183 robberies on “public property” in 2003, and the year before that, 212. By the definition in the report, this represents incidents on or near roads that are immediately adjacent and accessible to campus. This is nearly a 98% decrease in robberies in just two years. A law enforcement strategy that effective surely deserves national attention!

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