Headline: Wadsworth considers dropping gun ban in parks

The Medina Gazette is reporting that another gun control law is about to go down, thanks to the hard work of volunteers from Buckeye Firearms Association and other self-defense rights advocates on a veto override of then-Gov. Bob Taft on HB 347, which included language introducing a statewide preemption of local gun control laws.

From the article:

The Wadsworth City Council is considering eliminating a law that bans firearms in city parks because of a possible contradiction with a state law allowing guns in public parks.

Wadsworth Law Director Norman Brague raised the issue at Council’s Committee-of-the-Whole meeting Tuesday.

“I think we’re stuck with this decision,” Council President Tom Palecek told The Gazette on Tuesday. “I don’t know how we’re going to fight it.

“How would we take on the cost of litigation? Because if someone gets arrested, we could get sued,” he said.

The city law, initially passed in 1977, banned firearms with the exception of concealed-carry weapons belonging to people with a CCW license. It also bans the possession of air guns, bows and arrows and slingshots in public parks.

The local gun prohibitions, Brague said, are in contradiction with section 9.68 of the Ohio Revised Code, established in March 2007...

According to the article, the city hasn’t had any problems come up so far because “police have not been enforcing it.” However, the law director is quoted as saying “the police know not to do that, but it would be a problem if they did make arrests."

It was a problem for the city of Cleveland back in 2010, Brague said, when the city “tried to argue that under their ‘Home Rule’ they should be able to abide by their own ordinance, which was in violation of the state law.”

“The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled against Cleveland in December of 2010,” Brague said.

The article also details a similar issue in the city of Oberlin, which was resolved after a state concealed carry group challenged the local ordinance in court. As for Wadsworth, a lawsuit is not likely to be necessary. A corrective ordinance designed to bring the city in line with state law was give a second reading last week.

“At the next meeting, they could either suspend a third reading and vote or move it to a third reading,” Brague said.

If the Council chooses to move forward with the new ordinance, part of the former one would remain, because it also prohibits bows and arrows, slingshots and air guns in city parks, which is not in violation of state law, Brague said.

Tom James, director of the Medina County Park District, said that prior to the 2007 state law, “firearms were not permitted on park properties,” but now, they are permitted.

“All agencies have to abide by state law,” he said.

Recently, a similar ordinance was removed in the Poland Municipal Forest, after a gun rights advocate pointed local authorities to the ban's conflict with state law.

As BFA's Ken Hanson remarked on the historic day of the veto-override, "cities are out of the firearm regulation business."

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.