Polls will be open across the state of Ohio and around the nation today, and once again, pro-gun voters will have a disproportionate impact on the election outcome here in the Buckeye state.

Although there are 11 million voters in Ohio, about 4 million are ineligible to vote, either by age or lack of registering. And out of the 7 million registered voters, precedent suggests that only a little over 2 million (30%) will bother to drag themselves to the polls in an off-year election.

There are somewhere north of 400,000 people in Ohio who are licensed to hunt and/ or carry a concealed handgun. When one considers that, in the 2000 Presidential election, nine of 10 Ohio sportsmen of voting age went to the polls (a full 27% of the vote!), one can begin to see how much of an influence gun voters can have on elections that swing by just a few percentage points.

Click here to access the Buckeye Firearms Association 2009 endorsements.

An article from Cleveland Plain Dealer outdoor writer D'Arcy Egan recently allowed the newspaper to deviate from its usual modus operandi of negatively stereotyping gun ownership.