To the Editor: Politically motivated gun control

Editor's Note: The following letter to the editor of the Toledo Blade was published in response to that newspaper's latest anti-Second Amendment editorial entitled "Local gun control," which sought to prop up a push by a Cincinnati city council member to overturn Ohio's statewide preemption of local gun control laws. Because The Blade heavily edited the original letter, the entire thing is being presented here, with omitted text underlined.

Politically motivated gun control

Your March 1 editorial “Local gun control” asserts that making it legal again for Ohio cities to trump the Second Amendment would somehow allow cities to protect their citizens.

Had the editors bothered to do a little research, they would have found that Ohio cities did have the ability to enact local gun control laws, and these laws were not used to prosecute crime.

When Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson made similar claims about being prevented from keeping citizens safe, a public records request by Buckeye Firearms Association revealed that in the mayor's entire tenure, not only had the city not convicted a single person under their so-called assault weapons ban, they never even took one case to trial.

A similar lack of use of a local gun control law to protect citizens was displayed in Toledo. On the sunset of a ban on so-called Saturday night specials in 2002, it was revealed that charges had only been filed against one person in the two previous years, and only two people had ever been convicted under the law.

In Columbus, even OSU star Maurice Clarett's infamous robbery, committed with a firearm banned under that city's so-called "assault weapons" ban, was not prosecuted under the city's gun ban.

Why? Because any crime one can commit in Ohio with a gun is already a felony. State and federal charges with tougher penalties will always be pursued before local laws, which punish crimes as misdemeanors. They are designed only to provide city leaders, such as Cincinnati City Councilman and U.S. Senate candidate P.G. Sittenfeld, the ability to pretend they are doing something to address criminal problems in their cities.

CHAD D. BAUS
Archbold, Ohio

Editor’s note: The writer is the secretary and vice chairman of the Buckeye Firearms Association