The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting that State Auditor and anti-concealed-carry gubernatorial primary candidate Betty Montgomery was out-paced on fundraising nearly 2 to 1 by her Republican counterparts Ken Blackwell and Jim Petro in the first half of 2005.

According to reports filed Friday, Montgomery collected just $670,000, compared to Blackwell's $1.2 million, and Petro's $1.1 million. Blackwell's fundraising this year has outpaced all five major-party candidates for governor, while the news story reports that Montgomery is the only major-party candidate who did not raise $1 million or more since January.

From the story:

Polls show Blackwell leading his two opponents in the Republican primary. His front-runner status has allowed him to collect money from national Republican donors along with those in Ohio.

Republican Attorney General Jim Petro, who trails in early polling, raised $1.1 million this reporting period, placing him ahead of Montgomery but slightly behind Blackwell.

Still, Petro's $3.08 million balance is the largest of any candidate for governor and includes nine $10,000 donations.

In the Democratic contest, the Plain Dealer reports that anti-gun Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman raised $1.01 million since announcing his candidacy in February, and that U.S. Representative Ted Strickland, a pro-gun Democrat, collected $1.074 million even though he has been in the race for only about three months.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Today, in an historic vote in Second Amendment history, freedom prevailed.

When it comes to something as fundamental as the Second Amendment, the American people are determined to protect this freedom. That’s what happened in the United States Senate today.

The final outcome of the U.S. Senate vote on S. 397 -- the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” -- is a groundbreaking step forward for law-abiding firearm manufacturers, retailers and owners in this country. The National Rifle Association (NRA) invested many years trying to pass this needed legislation that will put an end to politically motivated predatory lawsuits.

The “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” is a vital bill that will save the centuries old, law-abiding, and highly regulated American industry that has persevered under the burden of these predatory lawsuits. The success of this bill was so critical to national security interests that it prompted the Department of Defense to issue a strong letter unequivocally urging passage.

We are grateful for the support of the 62 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. On behalf of our 4 million members and the tens of millions of gun owners across this country, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to Majority Leader Bill Frist for his unyielding efforts to ensure that S. 397 received a fair and just hearing before this legislative body.

We also appreciate Senator Larry Craig for his steadfast hard work in marshalling this effort through the Senate. Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell and Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum were also vital parts of this team whose dedicated efforts ought to be recognized.

The NRA needed 60 votes to ensure passage of this bill. This would not have been possible without support from Senators from the both sides of the aisle. We thank Minority Leader Harry Reid for supporting this legislation and the members in his caucus who voted for this proposed law.

America is a better and safer place with the passage of S. 397. Members of the United States Senate who voted for this measure placed principle over politics and voted for good policy.

We look forward to working with leaders in United States House of Representatives upon return from the August recess.

-‑nra--

Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen's group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and advocates enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation's leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the armed services.

The Columbus Dispatch is reported recently that Columbus city attorneys have asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Columbus’ assault-weapons ban.

From the story:

Assistant city attorneys Joshua T. Cox and Daniel W. Drake filed a motion yesterday to dismiss the suit because they said Franklin County Probate Court doesn’t have jurisdiction.

The motion also says Phil Harmon, a lawyer running for City Council, doesn’t have standing to file the suit.

Harmon practices estate law. He is one of six candidates for three seats on the council.

He said he’d file a response to the motion next Wednesday.

He said he’ll argue in his response that he does have standing to file the suit, and that the ban conflicts with the state’s concealed-weapons law.

Harmon told the newspaper he filed the suit in probate court because he was concerned that Columbus' new ban the doesn’t exempt people who inherit the banned weapons.

"It’s a big, gaping loophole that needs to be corrected," Harmon said.

He urged the city’s attorneys to ask the City Council to resolve the issue with an amendment.

Harmon said the ban poses a significant problem for his estate-law practice. Last year, he sold 20 guns he inherited from a deceased client so he could pay that client’s debtors. If he inherits weapons when the ban takes effect Aug. 11, Harmon said he could be prosecuted.

Harmon was due to file a response to the motion yesterday, and then the city will file further arguments Aug. 2.

Legislation is set to be proposed by Rep. Jim Aslanides is which would preempt the many municipal gun control laws across Ohio, and bring Ohio laws into uniformity when it comes to gun rights.

Click on the "Read More..." link below to read some recent letters to the Dispatch editor addressing Columbus' new law, and Aslanides' proposed legislation.

John Mitchel is running against Mike Dewine in the May 2006 U.S. Senate Primary. John is a genuine conservative who holds strong conservative values, including supporting our Second Amendment rights. On the other hand, former Democrat Mike Dewine is a moderate at best and often embraces liberal ideals such as when he voted to renew the federal Assault Weapon Ban. For more information on John Mitchel please visit his website at www.reformcongress.com

"Don't judge us by our results. Judge us by our intentions."

This is the message being sent by the City government in Columbus and other Ohio cities with so-called assault weapons bans on the books.

The Columbus Dispatch is reported Sunday (instead of before passage of that city's ban, when it might have made a difference) that "banning guns has produced loud arguments, but very little hard data to back them up."

From the story:

Columbus has no plan to track whether the assault-weapons ban that is to take effect on Aug. 11 is successful. Nationally, both opponents and supporters of weapons bans say almost no such information is available.

The story goes on to quote gun control extremists whining that a lack of adequate research is to blame for this (the paper fails to mention the years and years of efforts by gun controllers to prove their rights-infringing laws were making a difference, and a plethora of government studies which were paid for by your tax dollars).

Again, from the story:

In Ohio, Cleveland does not keep records on how its ban, in effect since 1991, is working, Cleveland Police Lt. Thomas Stacho said.

Dayton doesn’t track how well its ban is working, either. But one veteran officer has a strong opinion.

"It hasn’t done anything, not a thing," said Dayton Police Sgt. Dennis Chaney, who works with federal agents on that city’s Safe Streets Task Force. "Bad guys are always going to have guns, just as drug abusers are always going to have drugs."

Even Josh Cox, the assistant city attorney who helped draw up the Columbus ordinance, agrees with that.

"As a deterrent, it’s probably not going to have much of an effect on criminals," he said.

One provision requires people who already own weapons banned under the law to register them with the city or risk having them taken away.

But, Cox said, "That’s going to be law-abiding people."

Last year, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence issued a study showing that, since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban took effect in 1994, the criminal use of weapons it banned by name declined 66 percent.

But The New York Times last year cited a Justice Department study that said a small drop in crimes committed with semiautomatic-assault weapons had been offset by a rising number of crimes committed with other guns using larger magazines.

The National Rifle Association cites the Justice Department study as proof that assaultweapons bans don’t work, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.

Even an anti-gun group agreed.

"The federal ban was completely ineffective, it was so riddled with loopholes," said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., a national nonprofit group that wants to reduce gun violence.

She said she thinks California’s ban — which was a model for the ban in Columbus’ — has been effective.

But California doesn’t monitor its law, either.

No, of course it doesn't. After all, what do the results have to do with their good intentions?

As we reported recently, the 2006 gubernatorial race is shaping up with pro- and anti-gun candidates on both sides of the ballot.

Closer on the calendar is a special election race in Ohio's 2nd Congressional District, which pits the pro-gun former state representative Jean Schmidt, a Republican, against pro-gun Iraq War veteran and Democrat Paul Hackett. Fighting for votes in an extremely conservative district, Hackett is making no bones about his disagreement with his own Party when it comes to the Second Amendment.

The Cincinnati Post is reporting that in an interview with the Post editorial board, Hackett vocalized his Second Amendment support and belief that existing gun control laws are all that is needed to control gun crime and violence.

A major in the Marine Corps Reserves, attorney and resident of Indian Hill, the 43-year-old Hackett describes himself as a moderate Democrat and does not share Democratic party views on gun control, among other issues.

"I don't feel beholden to the Democratic or Republican Party because in some cases they both have it wrong," Hackett said.

Hackett said people vote Republican because they want to protect their right to own arms, but don't realize that they are giving up other personal freedoms.

Hackett, who owns assault rifles himself, supports timely background checks on gun purchasers, but disagrees with gun registration.

"The discussion on gun control should be gun safety and enforcement of the laws already on the books," he said.

The NRA has made its choice in this race, and it must have been a tough one. Now, it's up to voters.

By John R. Lott. Jr.
Archived at JohnRLott.com

Published Wednesday, July 20, 2005 at Columbus Dispatch

When the federal assault-weapons ban expired in September, its fans claimed that gun crimes and police killings would surge dramatically. Sarah Brady, one of the nation’s leading gun-control advocates, warned, "Our streets are going to be filled with AK-47s and Uzis." The Columbus City Council racheted-up the rhetoric, claiming the banned guns are "the weapons of choice for terrorists."

Well, more than 10 months have gone by and the only casualty has been gun-controllers’ credibility. Letting the law expire only showed its uselessness. In fact, the FBI announced last month that the number of murders nationwide fell by 3.6 percent last year, the first drop since 1999. Murders declined in both halves of last year from year earlier levels.

Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assaultweapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders last year than the 43 states without such laws, suggesting that doing away with the ban actually reduced crime. States with bans averaged a 2.4 percent decline in murders; in three states with bans, the number of murders rose. States without bans saw murders fall by more than 4 percent.

And the drop was not just limited to murder. Overall, violent crime also declined last year, according to the FBI, and the complete statistics carry another surprise for gun-control advocates: Guns are used in murder and robbery more frequently then in rapes and aggravated assaults, but after the assault-weapons ban ended, the number of murders and robberies fell more than the number of rapes and aggravated assaults.

It’s instructive to remember just how passionately the media hyped the dangers of "sunsetting" the ban. It was even part of the presidential campaign: "Kerry blasts lapse of assault-weapons ban," one headline said. A search of a computer database of news stories turned up more than 560 articles in the first two weeks of September that expressed fear about ending the ban. Yet the news that murder and other violent crimes declined last year despite the ban ending produced just one very brief paragraph in an insider political newsletter.

Despite the media bias, the irrelevance of the assault-weapons bans to crime rates was to be expected. Not a single published academic study has ever shown that these bans have reduced any type of violent crime. Even research funded by the Clinton administration didn’t find that it reduced violent crime.

Why? Simple: There’s nothing unique about the guns that these laws ban. The phrase assault weapon conjures up images of the fully automatic weapons used by the military, but the weapons in the ban actually function the same as any semiautomatic hunting rifle. They often fire the exact same bullets with the exact same rapidity and produce the exact same damage.

Yet, while this lesson has been learned everyplace else, Columbus is the only jurisdiction in the country to pass a new assault-weapon ban after the federal law sunset. Even gun-control-friendly states such as Illinois and New York saw new assault-weapon ban bills die in their legislatures this year. Nor have other cities joined in.

In addition, the Columbus ban goes much further than the old federal assault-weapons ban it is claims to replace. Indeed, in some ways, the law is much more restrictive than even Washington, D.C.’s regulations on rifles. The law bans any semiautomatic rifle with a detachable magazine and a stock covering the barrel that allows the "bearer to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being burned." That covers virtually all semiautomatic rifles.

There are a few guns, such as the M1 Garrand used by soldiers during World War II, that have a fixed magazine, but it is hard to think of any massproduced rifle that isn’t covered by the second restriction. The law effectively bans any mass-produced semiautomatic hunting rifle on the market.

While the federal ban proved useless, Columbus’ third attempted gun ban seems even more destined for failure. Only law-abiding citizens would obey the ban. And even if preventing criminals from getting these rifles actually mattered, it is hard to believe that a citywide ban would actually prevent them from getting access. Disarming the innocent hardly seems an effective way of reducing crime.

The Columbus law is so extreme that Ohio Rep. James Aslanides, RCoshocton, announced that he will introduce legislation that forbids cities from enacting their own gun laws. Most states have some restrictions on locally-enacted gun regulations.

Even for lawmakers, predictions must eventually matter. If legislators can’t see that these laws have failed to deliver as promised, it’s hard to know when facts will make a difference.

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

On Thursday, July 21, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Columbus City Council candidate Phil Harmon has filed the first of what may become several lawsuits against the City of Columbus, challenging Columbus’ assault-weapons ban and asking the court to prevent it from going into effect.

From the story:

Harmon, a longtime activist and lawyer and one of six candidates running for three seats on the council this fall, filed the suit yesterday in Franklin County Probate Court.

Harmon said the suit challenges the constitutionality of the entire law. But he filed in probate court, he said, because there’s no provision in the law allowing people to sell or transfer weapons to relatives if they die or need a guardian. Harmon practices estate law.

"So if someone had a gun all his life, if I became his guardian, I’m subject to prosecution," Harmon said yesterday. "It’s just reckless legislation that needs to be corrected as quickly as possible."

As the Dispatch pointed out in an earlier article, lawsuits over the city’s two earlier gun bans have proved costly. The city paid out $140,000 for attorney fees to Stephen P. Halbrook, a Fairfax, Va., lawyer who had both ordinances declared unconstitutional in the courts. Lawsuits were fought and won by the Columbus-based People's Rights Organization.

Again, from the story:

The council is too quick to pass laws that make criminals out of law-abiding citizens, Harmon said.

"From outlawing dogs in the park, to sofas on porches, to smoking in bars, and now gun ownership, where will it stop?" Harmon said in a prepared statement yesterday.

Mentel is not on the ballot in November, but council members Kevin Boyce, Mary Jo Hudson and Maryellen O’Shaughnessy — all of whom supported the gun ban — are.

The suit says the ban is unconstitutional because it is vague and too broad.

Harmon said he and city lawyers are to meet Friday with Probate Judge Lawrence A. Belskis to discuss a temporary restraining order.

The council adopted the assault-weapons ban on July 11. The ban — which prohibits the sale, possession and transfer of rifles, shotguns and pistols fitting the city’s description of an assault weapon — is to go into effect on Aug. 11.

According to the newspaper, Harmon has challenged City Hall before. He helped lead efforts to repeal the city’s $4-a-day rental car tax, helped to gather signatures on a petition that led the Council to temporarily ban water- and sewer-line extensions into the Big Darby Creek watershed, and represented bar owners in their failed quest to overturn the city’s smoking ban.

Newspapers in Ohio are awash with editorials criticizing the NRA's decision to cancel its 2007 national convention in Columbus after the city held sham hearings in which public testimony was overwhelmingly opposing before passing a ridiculous assault weapons ban written by an anti-gun extremist group from California.

From the Cincinnati Post:

The NRA said it would hold a convention in Ohio only if the General Assembly passed a law overturning the municipal weapons ban. State Rep. James Aslanides, a Republican from northern Ohio who authored the recent state law allowing concealed weapons to be carried legally, immediately announced plans to do just that. In fact, he wants to prevent cities and other units of local government from regulating guns at all. Such a prohibition would affect Cincinnati, which has an assault weapons ordinance of its own on the books. (Because of a court challenge it is not being enforced, a city spokesperson said.)

Even though we're dubious about the effectiveness of municipal weapons bans, we think the NRA and Aslanides are way off the mark.

Columbus City Council was publicly debating the assault weapons ban when the 2007 convention was announced. It's hard to believe that NRA's planners didn't know about it, and that such an ordinance, if passed, might interfere with their ability to display a full range of weaponry on the convention floor.

A hard search has turned up nothing in the way of the NRA asserting that they were unaware of the discussions. Quite the contrary - the NRA encouraged members to attend the public meetings Councilman Mentel presented as a way to listen to the community. And the community came out and spoke - overwhelmingly - in opposition to his plans. Who can fault the NRA for believing a politician would actually listen to his constituents before passing a law that has already proven on the Federal level to be a complete failure in its intended goal of crime reduction?

Again, from the Post editorial:

There are political overtones as well. Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, a supporter of the city assault weapons ban, is seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2006. Some Coleman supporters think he was set up by an organization that views gun control advocacy as a kiss of death for a statewide candidate.

Such suggestions are ludicrous. Coleman's status as a gun control advocate was by no means a secret. On April 8, 2004, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman staged a press conference next to a jungle gym, lamenting the fact that the city was unable to protect children by posting signs banning concealed handgun license-holders. Coleman called Ohio's concealed carry law "a travesty for our city and for our state."

Not surprisingly, the political overtones the newspaper fails to address are that Councilman Mike Mentel is running for Columbus Mayor, and believes that gun control advocacy is exactly the angle he needs to play to assume power.

As for Aslanides, he's going against a venerable tradition of home rule in Ohio. Columbus, Cincinnati and the rest of Ohio's cities should be free to regulate guns, even if the NRA disapproves.

As NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre pointed out Monday, Ohio is one of only seven states that does not have this law to protect gun owners from a confusing and dangerous patchwork of firearms laws, and one of only three states left in the nation with home rule. Just as he did with a concealed carry law in 2004, Rep. Jim Aslanides now appears poised to bring Ohio up to speed with the rest of the nation.

Why do Post editors have such suspicions about progress?

Related Story:
Cincy papers court gun dollars; discriminate against gun owners

"In conjunction with new fundraising strategies, we have been pursuing the development of a strong grassroots identity that will accurately represent our organization to our supporters and prospects", stated Ken Hanson, Buckeye Firearms Association Legislative Chair. "While our PAC’s name is changing, all core elements of the organization will remain the same. The Buckeye Firearms Association^TM will continue to represent our supporters with a strong voice in legislative debates, to provide endorsed candidates with strong levels of grassroots support to help them win elections, and we will continue to place emphasis on our strong partnerships with other pro-gun organizations," continued Hanson.

Main Media/ Organization Contact:

Ken Hanson
Legislative Chair

Chad D. Baus
Vice Chairman/ Northwest Ohio Chair