Governor's Mansion Defense Walk: ''No Wonder He Doesn't Care''

by Chad D. Baus

Behind the security cameras and tall iron gates, behind the stone walls and State Trooper Guard House, Bob and Hope Taft live in a stone mansion the likes of which few Ohioans will ever see, let alone live in.

Over 120 men, women and children took time away from Thanksgiving events and braved the crisp autumn air November 30, openly carrying firearms on "the Mother of All Defense Walks". They came to show Governor Taft the choice his opposition to concealed carry legislation is forcing upon those who need to carry a firearm for self-defense. And even though he didn't show himself, Taft managed to show the Walkers something as well.

"No wonder he doesn't care about what we have to go through as defenseless citizens," one Walker observed while gazing over the iron fences and through the thick arbor borders of the estate. "He probably can't remember a time when he didn't have armed guards and high security protecting his family 24-7."

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

Bob Taft was born a man of privilege, a member of the high society, where there is always paid help to do the every day work - whether that be cooking, taking out the garbage, or providing defense and security for one's family.

Has he ever experienced that sudden, overwhelming feeling of defenselessness when approached while alone in a car, pinned in traffic and unable to "just drive away?" Or has he always enjoyed the company of professional drivers and secure tranportation? Has his wife ever experienced the terror of being threatened by a sexual predator? Or has she always had the luxury of armed protectors? Have these two parents ever been in a situation where the very lives of their children were being threatened, and in which they knew that they would be unable to provide their children the protection they so depend on? Or have they always had others to scour the house for them when things go bump in the night?

Those questions and more likely ran through the minds of most of the "common folk" who came to Bexley on Sunday. Common folk like the family of Tony Gordon, who walked silently and resolutely past the Governor's Mansion bearing images of their fallen son (brother/father/uncle) on clothing and jewelry. Common folk like Kim Rife, once a victim of violent attack by someone who hated her because of her sexual preference. Common folk like you, and like me.

These Walkers joined a chorus of others around the state - citizens from all walks of life - who ask simply that they not have to risk arrest and prosecution for seeking to protect themselves. These Ohioans desire the right to choose to bear arms for their defense and security - a right which citizens in every border state, and 44 across the nation now enjoy. They desire the civil right - in fact the human right - to defend oneself from those who would threaten to take their life.

Total numbers of Defense Walkers' numbers will approach 2000 at the conclusion of the Pearl Harbor Defense Walks next week. They represent a visual sample of the one quarter of one million members of the Civil-Defense Rights Coalition which is calling the General Assembly to make House Bill 12 law, with or without the Governor. They represent the countless Ohioans who have been, or who will yet be victimized in Ohio in the long years of a dark and insidious ban on bearing arms for self-defense.

They represent those who cannot afford iron gates around their homes, those who cannot hide inside armored cars on their way to work, and those who do not have armed guards to protect their loved ones from evil.

Every time Bob Taft throws up another road block, insisting on provisions which would treat them like criminals to be put on a registry of offenders; every time he demands provisions such as those which would require parents to unholster their firearms in front of their children; and every time he defers his executive responsibility to bureacrats who claim families can defend themselves from attack in their car by "driving off", more and more Ohioans realize just what the Bexley Walkers did as they gazed at his cold stone mansion:

Bob Taft just doesn't care.