Youth-only hunt set for April 20-21

COLUMBUS, OH – The start of spring ushers in Ohio's annual wild turkey hunt, and hunters can enjoy the warmer weather in pursuit of this popular game bird. According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), the 2013 Ohio spring hunting season opens Monday, April 22, with the youth wild turkey season opening Saturday and Sunday, April 20-21.

"Ohio has a good population of wild turkeys and offers some great opportunities for a spring hunt," said ODNR Director James Zehringer. "The wild turkey is a true conservation success story in Ohio, and we hope to continue to build on our turkey hunting tradition."

The 2012 hatch should produce more jakes (1-year-old male turkeys) this year and will help offset the poor 2011 hatch. However, the woods may be quieter with fewer 2-year-old toms (male turkeys). These turkeys are generally the most vocal gobblers and readily located by hunters.

Hunters harvested 17,657 wild turkeys during the 2012 youth and spring turkey seasons. The total checked in 2011 was 18,162 wild turkeys.

The ODNR Division of Wildlife anticipates as many as 70,000 licensed hunters, not counting exempt landowners hunting on their own property, will enjoy Ohio's popular spring wild turkey season before it comes to a close on Sunday, May 19. The spring and youth turkey seasons are open statewide with the exception of Lake La Su An Wildlife Area in Williams County, which requires a special hunting permit.

by Chad D. Baus

We the People have spoken through our representatives in Congress. We do not want law-abiding Americans' Second Amendment rights curbed in the name of "doing something" about the horrific attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School. We do not want our legislators to pass things that feel good but that will do nothing to prevent these types of mass killings.

Unfortunately, Vice President Joe Biden is telling "stakeholders" that the President is preparing to use executive actions to act unilaterally and against the will of the American people as clearly expressed through their elected legislators.

From BuzzFeed.com:

Vice President Biden told White House allies in the gun control fight Thursday that President Obama will be announcing new executive actions on gun violence in the days after the Senate voted down a gun violence bill.

by Aaron Kirkingburg

The Dillon Sportsman Center is under new management and will be re-opening April 27th at 9am to welcome the public. Trap and skeet fields will be open, and all houses have been outfitted with new Atlas AT400 machines. Signup sheets for trap and skeet leagues will be available in the range house. The 100yd rifle range has six cement shooting benches available, with room to set up some prone positions left of the covered lanes. Our 25yd covered pistol range has ten lanes available with room for two shooters on each lane. Permanent cable system set at 25yds to attach targets or hang steel and bowling pins!

Free food and drinks will be served! Grill will be fired up around noon with burgers and dogs to blast away that hunger you built up on the range. Guest speaker Linda Walker, Buckeye Firearms Association Central Ohio Chair and member of the NRA Board of Directors, will address those present at around 1:00pm to get everyone fired up and informed about the goings on at the state house with BFA, and nationally with the NRA!

A gun raffle will be held around 2pm or so. A Smith and Wesson M&P .22 pistol will be raffled off for the benefit of Buckeye Firearms Foundation. Tickets will go on sale in the range house at 9am for $10/ea. No limit to the number of tickets you can buy, but you must be present to win.

Just look at the smile on that man's face! That's the smile of someone who's just won over $3,200 worth of guns and gear that will help him survive the end of the world as we know it.

Domestic terrorism. Civil unrest. Comet strike. Nuclear war. Zombie invasion. Whatever the scenario, Heath from Cambridge is now ready to bug out and survive if the unthinkable happens. This lucky patriot had the winning number for our recent raffle and picked up his giant prize package at Black Wing Shooting Center on Friday, April 12, 2013.

In addition to some pretty nifty prizes, Heath has the satisfaction of knowing that he helped support Buckeye Firearms Foundation, which sponsors the Armed Teacher Training Program and recently paid for 24 Ohio teachers and administrators to take an intensive 3-day active killer course at Tactical Defense Institute.

This article was updated as new information became available.

by Chad D. Baus

The United States Senate has failed to achieve the necessary 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster of the Manchin-Toomey amendment to Chuck Schumer's "universal background checks" bill, S. 649. The amendment, which was supported by Sen. Schumer, had been hailed by the media just last week as the best chance of getting a gun control bill through the Senate.

Crafted by a Sens. Manchin (D) and Toomey (R), the amendment sought to enact a mandatory background check on private sales at gun shows and between persons who initiated a transaction on the Internet and to increase the ways in which the government could begin a gun registration scheme.

All amendments required 60 votes to pass -- none passed. The vote on the anti-gun rights Manchin-Toomey amendment was 54-46. Continuing in his record of pro-gun rights votes, Sen. Rob Portman voted against this attempt to curb the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

Less than two hours later, an amendment sponsored by Sen. Diane Feinstein which would have banned hundreds of so-called "assault weapons" based on cosmetic features, was defeated by a 40-60 vote. Also defeated was an amendment that sought to ban standard capacity magazines for many rifles and handguns, 46-54.

Democrats successfully filibustered several pro-gun rights amendments, including National Concealed Carry Reciprocity, defeated 57-43, and and improvement for Veterans' Gun Rights, defeated 56-44.

Given the vote on the Manchin-Toomey gun control amendment, it is highly unlikely that the Senate will achieve the 60 votes necessary to pass S. 469.

A statement from Sen. Portman follows:

The following article was originally published by The Lima News. Republished with permission.

by Greg Sowinski

LIMA - A national survey of police officers show overwhelming support for the Second Amendment while opposing many federal gun control proposals they say would do little, if anything, to stop crime.

Those beliefs are supported by some local officers, as well.

The national survey was conducted by PoliceOne.com, an online resource for law enforcement officials that offers a wealth of information and services to officers across the country. The group has more than 450,000 members and conducted a scientific survey by polling more than 15,000 of its members.

Of the gun-control legislation proposed at the federal level, 71 percent of officers said a ban on "assault weapons" would not reduce violent crime and 96 percent of officers said banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds would not reduce violent crime.

Officers strongly supported legal concealed carry for citizens with 91 percent in favor. Officers also said the No. 1 way to stop mass shootings is more permissive concealed-carry policies for citizens.

"There is no way any type of ban on weapons or stricter rules on weapons is going to help anything," Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper James Bennett said. "It's a lot easier for a person to be able to protect themselves if they have a tool like a firearm to do that with. It's a lot easier to carry a gun than a cop."

by Alan Korwin

The so-called "background check" bill is really about gun registration -- ultimate and imminent registration of every gun and gun owner in America.

The mandatory paper records are saved -- nobody denies that.
Federal agents use those all the time.

The electronic records have virtually no controls on them.
They go into a system designed as a recording device.
This bill vastly expands the electronic records federal agents will collect.

THE MANCHIN-TOOMEY-SCHUMER KEY:

Read the bottom of page 27 of the bill* (below at the asterisk, read it, it's killer, very short) and you tell me if you think that language stops the federal government from recording, storing, collating, compiling, distributing, securing, retrieving, integrating, merging, using or... backing up its records forever. It doesn't. Show me an audit trail. You can't. It's not there.

It doesn't even limit the FBI or BATFE in this regard. It only restricts gun dealers and gun owners. It is a complete farce.

Show me where they can't go around and just use all the Form 4473 gun-registration papers you fill out that every dealer must permanently keep -- as they are doing right now and have been doing for years. You can't. This bill allows the federal government to do almost anything it wants with records of you and your firearms, and massively expands the records it can collect -- even though it can't collect absolutely every record at this time, yet.

Failure to give them all the records they currently demand under this bill, even by accident (and there are plenty of easy ways to innocently make an error), would put you in prison. The 15-year prison term they threw in for creating a federal registry is a meaningless smokescreen.

The bill requires you to get a background check to buy firearms from people you meet at a gun show, but doesn't require anyone to do a background check just because you want one. Dealers would have plenty of reasons not to do such a check -- like having paying customers, liability, fee caps, and pressure from a sometimes rogue federal agency like BATFE. That would mean the end of freedom at gun shows. This is something Sen. John McCain has been working on for more than a decade. McCain was quoted by the Associated Press today as "very favorably disposed" to this Manchin-Toomey-Schumer gun-infringement bill (meaning he likes it). This bill is totally unacceptable.

And what's that bit at the end of that section that says medical- and health-insurance-company owned guns are exempt? Say what? Where's the media on that? I'll do a more detailed report on this soon. Or someone should -- who's planning what that got that in there?

The bill offers gun owners some trinkets -- "sweeteners" they're called. Like being able to buy a firearm in any state you are in, not just your state of residence. That would remove a grotesque infringement in place since the 1968 Gun Control Act. It was apparently squeezed in there by a gun-rights group (CCRKBA.org) now taking a lot of heat for cooperating with the anti-rights bigots. That's a good trinket, true, and I might accept that -- but only as a stand-alone bill, certainly never as a condition for gun registration.

Do you think the gun grabbers would go for that? They only accepted Retail Freedom to get their tyranny enacted. There are other "sweeteners," like restoration of rights, and other things America should have -- but only as stand-alone bills, never as bait to allow gun registration. Manchin-Toomey-Schumer must be rejected outright. The idea of making tyranny acceptable by offering trinkets is absurd and must be killed.

It's far more important to look at the underpinning of this scheme, the story behind the story the public loudspeaker omits entirely.

Why are we even having this discussion? Because a madman killed children in a kindergarten in a corner of the nation. That's really the only reason.

This led Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer, and the president of the United States to begin a campaign to ban certain firearms we own by brand name and looks, our ammunition magazines by size, to restrict public gun shows, and introduce gun registration and background checks on all innocent Americans as a response. They are dancing in the blood of victims, to advance a monstrous agenda, a game they have played for decades.

They can call it background checks all they want.
It's about gun registration (and other illegal infringements).

And gun registration itself is a false flag,
and the media doesn't know that.
Most of the public doesn't either.

Think -- A gun list would not have saved or solved any of the mass killings that have ignited these law-writing frenzies, right? Right. In no way whatsoever. So what do we need? At last, the right question.

by Jim Shepherd

With the United States Senate now moving toward the eventual passage of legislation that is more anti-gun owners than anti-crime, anti-gun legislators and the media are starting to celebrate another baby-step toward their ultimate goal: disarmament of the private citizen. That sounds fatalistic, but even as New York Governor Cuomo calls proposed compromise legislation a "sell-out to the gun lobby" he uses the same breath to say it's "better than nothing."

Better than nothing is political shorthand for: "we'll get 'em all next time." With a number of allegedly pro-2A Senators more concerned at being called mean-spirited than principled, they may be right. And once again, we find ourselves at a societal tipping point. This time it's "the gun issue". Last week it was gay rights. Next week, who knows?

Washington really isn't where the pitched "gun battles" are being fought. Money and lobbying muscle is generally enough to tone down most radical proposals. That's why Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, et al, remain so valuable. They play to the extreme edge as their "moderate" cohorts work their incremental magic, all the while carping about not "getting enough". They know that in Washington, any win, however small, goes down in the books as a "W".

Pitched battles are being fought at lower government levels. In city halls and county courthouses, social pressure is used as a velvet hammer to pound those who disagree with "reasonable restrictions" into submission.

We are rapidly being divided into two nations. The question remaining is which one is the "have" nation and which is the "have-not". That depends on your definition of what an "ideal America" would look like.

by Dave Kopel

The Toomey-Manchin Amendment which may be offered as soon as Tuesday to Senator Reid's gun control bill are billed as a "compromise" which contain a variety of provisions for gun control, and other provisions to enhance gun rights. Some of the latter, however, are not what they seem. They are badly miswritten, and are in fact major advancements for gun control. In particular:

1. The provision which claims to outlaw national gun registration in fact authorizes a national gun registry.

2. The provision which is supposed to strengthen existing federal law protecting the interstate transportation of personal firearms in fact cripples that protection.

Let's start with registration. Here's the Machin-Toomey text.

(c) Prohibition of National Gun Registry.-Section 923 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
"(m) The Attorney General may not consolidate or centralize the records of the
"(1) acquisition or disposition of firearms, or any portion thereof, maintained by
"(A) a person with a valid, current license under this chapter;
"(B) an unlicensed transferor under section 922(t); or
"(2) possession or ownership of a firearm, maintained by any medical or health insurance entity.".

The limit on creating a registry applies only to the Attorney General (and thus to entities under his direct control, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives). By a straightforward application of inclusio unius exclusio alterius it is permissible for entities other than the Attorney General to create gun registries, using whatever information they can acquire from their own operations. For example, the Secretary of HHS may consolidate and centralize whatever firearms records are maintained by any medical or health insurance entity. The Secretary of the Army may consolidate and centralize records about personal guns owned by military personnel and their families.

The Attorney General may not create a registry from the records of "a person with a valid, current license under this chapter." In other words, the AG may not harvest the records of persons who currently hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Thus, pursuant to inclusio unius, the AG may centralize and consolidate the records of FFLs who have retired from their business.

Under current law, retired FFLs must send their sales records to BATFE. 18 USC 923(g)(4); 27 CFR 478.127. During the Clinton administration, a program was begun to put these records into a consolidated gun registry. The program was controversial and (as far as we know) was eventually stopped. Manchin-Toomey provides it with legal legitimacy.

The vast majority of FFLs are small businesses, often single proprietorships. Only a tiny fraction of FFLs are enduring corporate entities (e.g., Bass Pro Shops) which will never surrender their FFL. By consolidating and centralizing the records of all out-of-business FFLs, BATFE will be able to build a list of most people in the U.S. who have bought a gun from a store. The list will not be fully up-to-date for every gun owned by every individual, but the list will identify the very large majority of gun owners.

A new bill would make it a crime to "transfer" your gun to a spouse for more than seven days.

by Dave Kopel

Public-opinion polls about "universal background checks" for gun sales show widespread support. While President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg talk about "gun sales," the actual legislation moving through Congress aims to regulate far more than sales. It would turn almost every gun owner into a felon. The trick is that the language under consideration applies not only to sales but also to "transfers," which are defined to include innocent activities such as letting your spouse borrow your gun for a few hours.

Consider, for example, Senate bill S.649, which the Senate will soon take up for debate. The background-check portion of the bill, Charles Schumer's "Fix Gun Checks Act," is based on model language that the Bloomberg gun-control lobby is pushing all over the country.

To see how the Bloomberg bill makes felons of people who do not sell guns, consider a woman who buys a rifle when she is 25 years old. She keeps the rifle her entire life. Yet over her lifetime, she — like most gun owners — engages in dozens of firearms "transfers." She brings the unloaded rifle to a friend’s house, for instance, because the friend is thinking of buying a gun and wants to learn more about guns. The friend handles the rifle for a few minutes before handing it back. Another time, the woman lends the gun to her niece, who takes it on a camping trip for the weekend.

While the woman is out of town on a business trip for two weeks, she gives the gun to her husband or her sister. If the woman lives on a farm, she allows all her relatives to take the rifle into the fields for pest and predator control — and sometimes, when friends are visiting, she takes them to a safe place on the farm where they spend an hour or two target shooting, passing her gun back and forth. At other times, she and her friends go target shooting in open spaces of land owned by the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.

Or perhaps the woman is in a same-sex civil union, and she allows her partner to take her gun to a target range one afternoon. Another time, she allows her cousin to borrow the gun for an afternoon of target shooting. If the woman is in the Army Reserve and she is called up for an overseas deployment, she gives the gun to her sister for temporary safekeeping.

One time, she learns that her neighbor is being threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend, and she lets this woman borrow a gun for several days until she can buy her own gun. And if the woman becomes a firearms-safety instructor, she regularly teaches classes at office parks, in school buildings at nights and on weekends, at gun stores, and so on. Following the standard curriculum of gun-safety classes (such as NRA safety courses), the woman will bring some unloaded guns to the classroom, and under her supervision, students will learn the first steps in how to handle the guns, including how to load and unload them (using dummy ammunition). During the class, the firearms will be “transferred” dozens of times, since students must practice how to hand a gun to someone else safely. As a Boy Scout den mother or 4-H leader, the woman may also transfer her gun to young people dozens of times while instructing them in gun safety.

Under S. 649, every one of the above activities would be a federal felony, subject to precisely the same punishment a person would receive if he had knowingly sold a firearm to a convicted violent felon. S. 649, like other Bloomberg-model bills, has a few exceptions to the ban on transfers, but none of them apply to the situations described above.