Cincy Post editorial highlights failure of Ohio gun control laws

01-28-2004
Cincinnati Post

Getting weapons off the streets

The value of equipping police with non-lethal weapons has been shown at least twice this month.

Last week, Cincinnati police successfully used a stun gun on a suspect who was reaching for a gun as he struggled with officers who had run him down in a foot chase. It was the type of situation that could easily enough have forced officers to use deadly force. Earlier in the month police used a Taser, with no lasting harm, to subdue a man in a West Price Hill apartment.

The point is that stun guns, while not the end-all and be-all, can in certain situations be a useful addition to the law enforcement arsenal.

Of course, these incidents also drive home the danger that police face every day. Indeed, the most recent use of a stun gun to subdue an armed suspect came at about the time federal and local officials were issuing a disturbing report on the prevalence of guns on city streets.

It's impossible to know, of course, just how many people are carrying guns, legally or otherwise, at any given moment. But police arrest records provide one barometer. In 2000, Cincinnati police made 202 gun-related arrests and confiscated 805 weapons. In 2001, there were 247 such arrests and 919 guns confiscated. In 2002 the number of arrests nearly doubled, to 415, and the number of weapons seized jumped to 1,156. Last year was worse yet: 471 gun-related arrests, 1,508 guns seized.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

To a degree, perhaps, the numbers for 2001 and 2002 reflect the unofficial slowdown by police in the wake of the city's rioting. But officers and others familiar with the issue say there are indeed more illegal guns on the streets, due in no small part to the drug trade.

State and federal prosecutors have been taking advantage of laws that add extra prison time for certain weapons offenses -- a trend to be encouraged. Meanwhile, we need to give officers who are enforcing the law all the tools possible to to so with a minimum loss of life.

Commentary:
The story within in the story here, which anti-gun editors at the Post seem unable to comprehend, is the abject failure of Ohio's old concealed carry ban to prevent criminals from toting guns about while searching for defenseless targets.

Despite bans on concealed firearms, background checks, Brady Bunch weapons bans, criminals in Cincinnati (and the rest of Ohio) are obtaining firearms, and committing more crimes, with ever increasing frequency.

Yet the knee-jerk reaction by media and some politicians to public rampage shootings like the one in Lorain last week are always to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain or possess firearms for their defense and security.

The Post editors want to give officers the tools they need to enforce the law. We suggest they take a look at all the trees in their editorial forest, and get behind efforts to give citizens the tools they need to defend their very lives.