Anti-gun Columbus Dispatch editorial signals death of newspapers' relevance in shaping public policy debates

[Editor's Note: The following was submitted to The Columbus Dispatch as a guest op-ed response to the newspaper's June 22 editorial on the introduction of HB256, entitled "Half-Cocked". The Dispatch not only chose not to publish the editorial - they did not even offer the courtesy of a response.]

by Ken Hanson

The recent Dispatch editorial "Half-cocked" (June 22, 2011) is less an editorial and more an obituary lamenting the death of The Dispatch's relevance in shaping public policy debates. As with every other pro-self defense improvement in Ohio law over the past decades, The Dispatch editorial page immediately channels the spirit of Harold Camping and proclaims that the end of the world is upon us.

No editorial from The Dispatch would be complete without blaming their editorial irrelevance on the "deep pockets" of the gun lobby. A quick check on the Ohio Secretary of State's website of the 2010 pre-general election expenditure reports filed for both the Ohio FOP and the NRA Political Victory Fund reveals that the Ohio FOP alone outspent the NRA by a 3-1 margin, $13,800 to $4,300. Apparently the editors feel the General Assembly is for sale, but they are simultaneously very bad at math.

The opening four paragraphs of The Dispatch's latest apocalyptic prophecy establish that they no longer care when it comes to factual accuracy when covering self-defense issues. These laws are not, as The Dispatch's straw man claims, about a "reasonable, regulated right to own and use firearms." A quick check of the relevant laws and Constitutional language indicates we are talking about the fundamental, individual right to self-defense. The possession of a firearm is merely incident to the exercise of that right, a means to an end.

Fundamental, individual right – you know, the same type of fundamental, individual right as in the First Amendment that guarantees that unnamed persons employed by newspapers get to write inaccurate, unattributed editorials. These nameless, faceless editorialists can even sit down to write their rants in a restaurant (even while consuming a beer!), a government building, an airport, a school and all the other places where we are stripped of the right to defend ourselves, and they can do so without first being fingerprinted and put through a recurring licensing process.

I invite The Dispatch to imagine a journalistic world run by a state licensing process where prosecutors and police get to determine the only manner in which they may exercise their fundamental, individual First Amendment rights. Next time one of your reporters enters a government building, steps foot on campus at OSU or gets into a car, imagine that reporter has just shed all claims to constitutional protection under the First, Fourth or Fifth Amendment.

Absurd. The Dispatch would never stand for that. The right to self-defense should be treated no differently.

If this analogy does not shame the nameless editor into recanting, then hopefully The Dispatch will at least explain, at some point, why Dispatch readers in Ohio are more dangerous than the readers of other newspapers in the other states that have had these types of laws for over a decade without meaningful problems.

Ken Hanson is a gun rights attorney in Ohio. He serves as the Legislative Chair for Buckeye Firearms Association, and is the attorney of record for Buckeye Firearms Foundation, which filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court cases. The National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) has awarded him with its 2008 Defender of Justice Award and 2009 Jay M. Littlefield Volunteer of the Year Award. He is the author of The Ohio Guide to Firearm Laws, a certified firearms instructor and holds a Type 01 Federal Firearms License.