This article appeared online at on Tuesday, May 17, 2016: 


Image of the Bill of (United States Constitution) cropped to show just the Second Amendment.





Beginning with a concealed-carry law in 2004, Ohio has continued to pass a steady stream of laws, with more in the pipeline. Of 25 bills dealing with in the state’s present legislative session, 14 would expand gun rights, while just seven would restrict them. And most of those restricting gun rights end up never getting out of committee.

The next step in Ohio is passing House Bill 48, which would remove present restrictions against carrying concealed into university buildings, day-care centers, school zones, aircraft, government buildings, and the public areas of airports and police stations. Opponents are calling HB 48 a “guns everywhere” bill, while supporters say it will further reduce “gun-free” zones and their attractiveness to would-be shooters seeking unarmed targets.

In recent years, Ohio has passed and then expanded the “castle doctrine” to include not only private homes but personal vehicles as well. National reciprocity with other states has been expanded, as has carrying concealed into bars and restaurants.

In , Governor Sam Brownback just signed into law a bill that allows public employees to carry concealed while going about their daily duties. This followed a law passed last year that eliminated a state requirement that a citizen applying for a permit must take an eight-hour class first. Now Kansans are free to determine if they need to take such a class, or not.

Even in Massachusetts, a state traditionally noted for its anti-Second Amendment stance, pushback at a local level ended anti-gunners’ attempts to restrict its citizens’ rights. On May 10, nearly 1,000 of Longmeadow, Massachusetts’, 15,000 residents showed up at a town meeting to protest bills that would have imposed a $300 fine for anyone carrying a gun in public or for possessing an “assault” weapon, and would have required all citizens to register their firearms with the police department. The debate extended into the wee hours of the morning before each of these intrusions was overwhelmingly voted down.

When bills are offered to restrict ownership of firearms, their proponents usually claim they will restrain criminal activity while claiming that further expansion of ownership will have dire consequences. But most of those dire consequences never happen. As Dean Rieck, executive director of the Buckeye Firearms Association, said, “Once we had Ohio citizens carrying concealed , everybody discovered that the sky was not going to fall. It made a lot of other significantly easier … nothing disastrous happened. We found out that people who were carrying concealed were doing so responsibly.”

As regains it footing and the Second Amendment is increasingly being understood, honored, and enforced, violent gun continues to decline. In 2000, the national gun homicide rate was 3.8 per 100,000 people, nearly half of what it was seven years earlier. As of 2014, that number has dropped further, to 3.43 per 100,000, according to Pew Research.

Even that number is too high, as it is skewed by just a few cities (most with onerous, even draconian, restrictions on Second Amendment-protected rights) with outsized gun . For instance, San Francisco’s rate of gun per 100,000 population, according to the Independent Journal, is 6.7, Los Angeles is 9.2, Phoenix is 10.6, Houston is 12.9, Minneapolis is 7.1, Chicago is 11.4, New Orleans is 62.1, Atlanta is 17.2, Detroit is 35.9, Buffalo is 16.5, Baltimore is 29.7 and Washington, D.C., is 19.

One can hope that the common sense reflecting support for the Second Amendment might soon infiltrate these murder capitals as well.

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