By Aaron Kirkingburg & Larry S. Moore

The Ohio Division of Wildlife is once again holding its annual open house meetings for each district. These meetings will be held on March 4th at the District Offices in districts 1-4 and at the Greene County Fish and Game clubhouse for district 5. These public forums are held every year in order to give Ohio hunters, trappers and anglers a chance to bring policy and regulatory concerns directly to Division of Wildlife personnel.

Attending these district meetings is a great opportunity to for CHL holders to make their collective voice heard in a way that will be noticed.

As many of you know, the Division of Wildlife has been unwilling to fall in line with state law, and allow sportsmen and women, with a CHL to carry while deer hunting in Ohio. The issue has been brought up at these open houses in the past, but without success. Only thirty-five comments regarding concealed carry were received at the open houses in March 2006. Quite frankly, that is not enough demand to drive change.

Click on 'Read More' to learn how you can help make a difference this time around!

Buckeye Firearm Association's web site is seeing an amazing growth in visitors and new articles are being posted several times a week.

This week's "Friday Flashback" is....

How Elections Matter

By Jim Irvine

Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on March 25th, 2006.

Every year we hear how important elections are, and in spite of all the hype, the truth is that every election is important. In November, you are sure to hear someone say, “Why don’t we have a good candidate to choose from?” I’ll tell you why; because they didn’t show up to elect the good candidate in the primary. Ohio’s primary election is May 2 and Republican and Democratic candidates must win the primary to be on the ballot in the fall. We need to work together to ensure we have good candidates to in November. Every election matters.

This month, the Ohio House passed HB347 with a 76-19 vote. (Four Representatives were absent) Pro votes exceeded anti votes by a 4 to 1 ratio. 80% of votes cast were in favor of improving our firearms laws.

Two years ago, the House voted 69-28 to pass HB12. Four years ago HB274 passed the House but never made it to Governor Taft’s desk. Because we changed the makeup of the House and Senate, we changed the outcome of concealed carry and thus got our (flawed) law.

It’s interesting to note that this happened even while the Democrats picked up 2 seats from Republicans. While the leaders of the DNC are vehemently anti-gun, the Ohio Democratic Party led by Representative Chris Redfern is not.

Last session, the 7th district (Cleveland) was occupied by Representative Ed Jerse. He led the fight against passing concealed carry in the House. He offered amendments in committee to try to kill the bill, and if he could not kill it, he aimed to change it into something terrible for gun owners. He spoke out against concealed carry on the House floor, and led a long debate before it finally passed. He gave the news media lots of inaccurate, but scary sound bites describing how there would be mass killings by people carrying guns.

In November 2004, Kenny Yuko(D) was elected to represent the 7th district.

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