Headed to the governor: 2 BFA-backed bills to prohibit firearms liability insurance, sales tracking, registries

The Ohio Senate voted 25-6 yesterday, Dec. 18, to send amended Senate Bill 58 to Gov. Mike DeWine's desk — legislation that would prohibit requiring firearm liability insurance or being required to pay a fee for the possession of a firearm, part of a firearm, its components, its ammunition, or a knife.

Senate Bill 148, which was amended into SB 58, prohibits financial institutions from tracking firearms purchases and to prohibit government entities from maintaining a registry of firearms or firearm owners.

Both SB 58, sponsored by Sens. Terry Johnson (R-McDermott) and Theresa Gavarone (R-Huron), and SB 148, sponsored by Sen. Terry Johnson, fight recent efforts by gun control advocates to make gun ownership more expensive and less private for law-abiding gun owners instead of cracking down on the actual criminal misuse of firearms.

BFA has supported both bills since the beginning of the legislative session and has testified in both the House and Senate.

Buckeye Firearms Association thanks the House and Senate for passing these important bills and urges Gov. DeWine to sign them into law immediately. It is time to stop trying to punish and infringe the rights of ordinary, law-abiding gun owners for the acts of criminals.

Here is BFA's testimony for SB 58:

To: House Insurance Committee
From: Rob Sexton, Legislative Affairs Director, Buckeye Firearms Association
Date: June 6, 2023
Re: Support for SB 58

Mr. Chairman, members of the House Insurance Committee, I am here on behalf of Buckeye Firearms Association in favor of Senate Bill 58. Opponents of our Second Amendment rights are an inventive lot, continually seeking ways to get around constitutional protections to prohibit or restrict firearms possession and ownership. This has surely been the case with the current illegal actions taken by the city of Columbus to restrict Constitutionally protected firearms rights.

But while some opponents of firearms rights seek to outright ban differing types of firearms and equipment, others take a more insidious approach by usurping our rights through government intervention such as attempts to levy taxes on individual rounds of ammunition.

A more recent example of this type of work has been efforts to pass laws in California, Connecticut, and New York to require anyone who possesses a firearm to purchase special liability insurance. They don’t seek to ban firearms outright, but rather raise the cost for owning one, thereby denying self defense rights to those with less financial means and make gun ownership subject to insurance underwriting decisions. It is not clear whether insurance companies would even offer such a product. And finally, as is too often the case with gun control activists, this type of requirement transfers the penalty for violence from the criminal to the law abiding, making people who simply want to protect their families and loved ones, foot the bill for those who wouldn’t buy this insurance product, if it was available.

This type of requirement would seem to be blatantly unconstitutional both federally and here in Ohio. But as we have seen recently, activist courts often warp constitutional protections.

Understanding the nature of activist courts and these backdoor attempts to steal Second Amendment rights to protect ourselves allows the Ohio General Assembly to get ahead of these efforts and bar the door against them. Senate Bill 58 takes a proactive approach to this attack and simply spells out that gun owners in Ohio cannot be required to purchase liability insurance as a condition of possessing or purchasing a firearm. Senate Bill 58 builds a defense of firearms rights before they are infringed. Seeing the bad examples in other states and even here in Ohio where our big cities openly defy the law to infringe on the rights of people to protect themselves should compel legislators to prevent this type of attack from ever happening here. That is exactly what this bill does. ...

Here is BFA's testimony for SB 148:

To: Senate Veterans and Public Safety Committee
From: Rob Sexton, Legislative Affairs Director, Buckeye Firearms Association
Date: January 23, 2024
Re: Support for SB 148

Mr. Chairman, members of the Senate Veterans and Public Safety Committee, I am providing testimony on behalf of Buckeye Firearms Association to speak in favor of Senate Bill 148.

Senate Bill 148 would prevent the financial industry from creating a code specifically aimed at purchases from firearms retailers. This latest, terrible idea would allow for the tracking of firearms purchases, which could then be monitored by financial companies. Government agencies could then later request or even require credit card processors to turn this information over, and it would then function similar to a registration list, which of course firearm owners strongly oppose.

Currently most banking organizations also oppose the creation of this specific code aimed at firearms retailers, but of course this could change in today’s world, where companies are increasingly pressured to score better on an Environmental, Social, & Governance scale.

Coding purchases from firearm retailers is a gross invasion of privacy concerning a constitutionally protected right. It is also an imprecise method of compiling information. Most firearm retailers also sell items unrelated to firearms such as other sporting goods and even clothing. All of these would still be coded as a purchase from a gun dealer. Conversely firearms sold at a major big box department store such as Walmart would not be coded as a purchase from a firearm retailer.

Buckeye Firearms Association opposes the creation of a Merchant Category Code for gun purchases, and we call on 2nd Amendment supporters in the General Assembly to take action to prevent the compiling of such information from Ohioans. Senate Bill 148 addresses this concern. We are pleased to support Senator Terry Johnson on this legislation, and we join the National Shooting Sports Foundation as proponents, asking this committee to advance this bill for consideration by the full Senate. ...

Dean Rieck is Executive Director of Buckeye Firearms Association, a former competitive shooter, NRA Patron Member, former #1 NRA Recruiter, and host of the Keep and Bear Radio podcast.

Joe D. "Buck" Ruth is a longtime small-game hunter and gun owner who spent nearly three decades in the news industry.