In a story covering Attorney General Jim Petro’s release of 2004 Ohio Concealed Handgun License data, the Youngstown Vindicator is reporting that while license issuance is on par with other states’ experiences, the original sponsor of Ohio’s concealed carry legislation believes abuse of the Media Access Loophole has deterred even more applications.

From the story:

"The 45,000-50,000 range is historically what we've seen in other states,” said John Hohenwarter, a Fairfax, Va.-based lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. “It's pretty much what we saw in Michigan."

According to news accounts, more than 80,000 licenses were issued during the first two years of concealed-carry in Michigan since the law there was passed a few years ago.

But the sponsor of the Ohio concealed-carry law says he believes the number of licenses issued in this state so far is low.

State Rep. Jim Aslanides, a Coshocton Republican, said he believes the numbers of licenses issued statewide thus far should be approaching 100,000.

Aslanides said he's been hearing complaints from some over a provision in the Ohio law that allows journalists to obtain the names of concealed-carry permit holders by county.

Aslanides said some newspapers have published lists of concealed-carry permit holders, which might have affected the numbers of license applicants.

The Springfield (IL) State Journal-Register is reporting that the president of a Springfield, Illinois chapter of the Million Mom March, who began lobbying against gun violence after her son was shot to death in 2002, was arrested last week when police allegedly found an illegal gun and drugs in her home. Press reports also said Stevens did not have the ID card required of Illinois firearms owners.

Annette "Flirty" Stevens, however, accuses law enforcement (normally entrusted with the utmost respect by Million Mom Marchers whenever one offers up anti-gun rhetoric), of plot to get her to give up information about unsolved crime in the city.

From the story:

The handgun, which had a scratched-off serial number, and drugs allegedly were discovered Friday morning inside Stevens' home in the 2500 block of South 15th Street. Authorities said they obtained a search warrant for the residence as part of an ongoing investigation of a recent series of drive-by shootings. No one has been hurt in the gunplay.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted in the search.
Although police declined to get into specifics, Stevens has a "close connection" with one of two feuding groups involved in the shootings, Lt. Rickey Davis said Monday.

Stevens, 47, who is free on bond, admitted she does know some of the people allegedly involved in the drive-by shootings. But she said she only knows them because her interest in stopping gun violence - sparked by the shooting death of her son Jericko Clark, 20, on July 13, 2002 - has her in the neighborhoods talking to the youths.

She said the police wrongly believe she is the ringleader of the shootings, and they think she has information to solve those cases, as well as others, including the December murder of Andre Ayers, 22, who was shot as a procession of cars wound through the city's east side.

"This is a blatant attempt to try and undermine me," she said Monday night. "... They can't solve these crimes, and I'm familiar with these individuals, so they're going after me because I socialize with all of them."

Police told the newspaper they began taking a closer look at Stevens after her name came up in interviews with witnesses and informants.

"Basically, she has a close connection with individuals that have been involved in one side of these two groups that are feuding," Davis is quoted as saying, declining to elaborate.

Stevens admits to having the illegal in the house, but reportedly she said it belonged to her son. She didn't find it until six or seven months after he died. Not knowing what to do with it, she wrapped it up, put it in a drawer and forgot about it. The story offers no word on why, if the didn’t want the illegal weapon, this Million Mom March chapter president did not take it to all one of the gun “buy-back” schemes her organization loves to promote as helping to take illegal guns off the street.

Again, from the story:

Last fall, she appeared with other anti-gun advocates at a Statehouse news conference to urge federal officials to renew a ban against semiautomatic assault weapons.

Jonathan Lackland, Midwest regional director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the march's partner organization, said he was shocked to hear about Stevens' arrest.

He wished to withhold comment on the case until he learned more about it, but he did say he knew Stevens was dedicated to the cause.

"I know Miss Stevens, and I know her character," Lackland said. "I know after the death of her son, it really prompted her to jump full force into activism in terms of gun-violence prevention.

"She has been a staunch supporter of gun-violence-prevention measures," Lackland added. "She has lived by (the theme of) 'I don't want anyone to go through the pain and misery I have gone through. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.'"

Stevens has not been formally connected to any crime directly related to the drive-by shootings. But Friday's discoveries could lead to her being charged with defacing the identification marks on a handgun, manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance and having no valid firearm owner's ID card, police said.

Last week, in a http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22... ">blast email to subscribers on her website, Ohio gun ban extremist Toby Hoover asked rhetorically, “Is there some guarantee that gun owners can give us that they will always be ‘law abiding’?”

The response we offered at the time deserves a slight modification:

Is there any guarantee Toby can give that SHE will? Lately, not even Ohio Supreme Court justices and Ohio police officers [and Million Mom March chapter presidents] seem able to provide assurance that they can always be trusted to obey the law.

Click on the “Read More…” link below for a press release addressing this revelation from the Citizens’ Committee on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Readers of the Toledo Blade business section were recently treated to a story on workplace shootings, which included some extremely biased and questionable information.

The story was prompted by the recent a shooting in a “no-guns” Jeep plant, and featured details on a seminar in Toledo sponsored by SKY Insurance, and attended by 200 area business leaders.

The seminar speaker, Paul Michael Viollis, Sr., is president of Risk Control Strategies, of New York. Described by the Blade as a “a national expert on workplace violent crime”, Viollis told business leaders that “the general aspects of the Jeep plant shooting are consistent with about 3,000 cases he has studied for 20 years.”

In the story, the Blade noted that he declined to discuss specifics to back up his claim. Perhaps there is a reason:

In order for his claims to be accurate, simple math shows:

3000/20 = 150 "Jeep-like" shootings per year;
or about 3 "Jeep-like" shootings per state per year;
or about 3 "Jeep-like" shootings per week nationwide.

Mr. Viollis is quoted as saying a steady increase in workplace violence has "clearly hit epidemic proportions here in the United States." He told attendees there are now an average of 17 workplace homicides a week, but that many go unnoticed by the national media unless multiple victims are involved.

It is important to note that when citing these statistics, Viollis includes violence OF ALL TYPES (fists, clubs, hammers, knives, guns, etc.), and includes single homicides and cases of domestic violence. Given the size and population of the United States, is really not as startling a number as it first appears. Even so, we are given to question whether Viollis is including victims of crime (i.e. defenseless employees murdered in robberies) in his homicide count.

John Wingerter, a Sky Insurance training coordinator, told the Blade the forum was geared toward educating human resource directors on behavioral cues in the aftermath of the Jeep shootings. Was Sky Insurance also expecting Viollis to regurgitate his anti-gun vitriol at the seminar?

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

WDTN.com (Dayton’s NBC affiliate) is reporting that a woman was on her way to take some church friends to dinner when she was carjacked at gunpoint.

The carjacker put a gun to her head in an alley near Grand Avenue as Joan Franks was taking dinner to her friends. Franks told WDTN it's one of the most frightening things that ever happened to her.

"I asked him, please just take my car, and my purse, and the keys, and let me be. And he did do that, and I'm very grateful.

Police are still looking for her 1996 blue Cadillac Deville.

Commentary from OFCC Senate District 10 Coordinator Larry Moore:
This woman is very fortunate. Grand Avenue is less than 2 miles from where Tony Gordon was car-jacked, and ultimately died as a result. This actually happened late Monday but was still daylight.

The story serves to point out that there is a need to be vigilant and ready to defend yourself. Apparently car-jacking is a safe crime - it appears in Dayton that very few car-jackers are caught. We certainly see a number of them in the news, but hear very little about anyone being apprehended.

That is certainly true in the case of Tony Gordon, whose killer is still at large.

Toledo Blade Columbus Bureau Chief James Drew has filed a report on the Ohio Attorney General's release of data on the success of the concealed handgun license program in 2004.

As noted in the story, Attorney General Jim Petro said the measure had a "smooth rollout.''

From the story:

Of Ohio's 88 counties, Lucas ranked 13th in the number of licenses issued, with 882.

"I have not heard of or experienced any problems in any way, shape, or form," said Sgt. Eric Stearns of the Lucas County Sheriff's Office.

The county with the most licenses issued last year was Clermont, east of Cincinnati, with 2,285.

Figures supplied by county sheriffs to the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission showed that 78 licenses were suspended because a permit-holder had been arrested, charged with certain crimes, or was the subject of a protection order.

Of that total, 42 licenses were revoked, but the number is somewhat skewed because counties also reported permit holders who died under that category. The report didn't break out the reasons for licenses being revoked.

Defiance County issued 127 licenses last year and denied two applications.

Sheriff David Westrick said the claims on both extremes of the decade-long debate in the legislature have not come true since the law took effect.

Sheriff Westrick went on to describe the CHL-holders in Defiance County as supporters of the constitutional right to bear arms. "We have not had one incident with one of those folks," he told the Blade.

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