By Chad D. Baus

As many are aware, my history as a shooter and grassroots firearms activist begins not in Ohio, but in Tennessee. I lived in Nashville from 1994 - 2000, met my wife and married there. It was her father who introduced me to the shooting sports.

Many have also heard about my father-in-law's experience with an attempted carjacking, an incident which convinced me that it would be irresponsible for me not to obtain a Tennessee Handgun Carry License as part of my responsibility to protect my family.

Returning to Ohio in 2001 to join my family business, I immediately went looking for others who were trying to get a concealed carry law passed in Ohio and formed this political action committee with Jim Irvine and Mary Friscone in 2002.

A long-time sufferer of Parkinson's disease, my father-in-law died suddenly three weeks ago yesterday. While it would be tempting to use this space to eulogize what this target shooter, hunter and sportsman meant to me, I will instead pass on still more lessons I have learned, thanks to him.

July 9, 2006
U.S. News & World Report

Oklahoma Rep. Dan Boren's Washington office features his hunting trophies, including a stuffed wild turkey and a mounted deer head. The freshman congressman's enthusiasm for firearms might always have stood out in the Democratic Party, but Boren now finds himself among an even more endangered species: Democrats willing to discuss guns at all.

"When we as Democrats are trying to reach out and speak to voters in the center of the country, I don't think that we can support gun control," he explains. After seeing Democrats hammered at the polls for voting to regulate guns, many of his colleagues seem to agree. As a result, a number of pro-gun measures moving through Congress will most likely face little opposition, as advocates of gun control increasingly find themselves marginalized and ignored.

Not long ago, it was the gun lobby on the defensive from the passage of the Brady bill in 1993 and the 1994 ban on "assault" weapons. But some say support for gun control cost Democrats the House in 1994, and former President Clinton credited it with Al Gore's 2000 presidential defeat. "It's different than it was in the early '90s. Those were, in retrospect, the glory years," says Paul Helmke, former GOP mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., who recently took the reins of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Meanwhile, with little fanfare, National Rifle Association backers in Congress allowed the assault weapons ban to expire in 2004 and last year shielded gun makers from being sued over crimes committed using their products. Since 1999, nine states have eased restrictions on concealed weapons, and NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre says the freedom of gun owners is in "the best shape it's been in decades."

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