Letter to the Editor: Protect right of self-defense

June 13, 2003

To the editor of the Mansfield News Journal:

Regarding the May 26 article, "Bill limits backyard guns," which refers to House Bill 180.

If you are a law-abiding gun owner, you need to call your state representatives and tell them to vote this bill down. This bill would do more damage to your gun rights than the Clinton Gun Ban and the Brady Bill.

House Bill 180 would allow township trustees in Ohio the power to pass "gun-free" zones in unincorporated areas of townships, making it illegal for gun owners to fire a gun for lawful purposes, (i.e., shooting a coon or groundhog that is demolishing one's vegetable garden) -- even on their own property if less than one acre.

Madison Township Trustee Homer Hutcheson supports the bill, stating there are few places to hunt in Madison Township anyway. Again, Mr. Hutcheson, the Second Amendment has never been about hunting, it is about the unalienable right to self-defense; just read it.

Mr. Hutcheson also seems ignorant to the fact he has residents in Madison Township who not only raise gardens but crops like soybeans on less than an acre. This type of gun banning would eliminate those gardens and crops because as anyone who recently has tried to raise a garden in the town or country knows, your months of effort and produce can be 100-percent destroyed in one night unless you consistently trap and, yes, kill chipmunks, groundhogs, and coons among other varmints.

While the article claims exceptions would be made for residents acting in self-defense, you tell me how short of a pen stroke it will take to alter that exception a month or year down the road. The end objective of every solitary gun-control law, whether federal, state or local, is the elimination of the common man and woman's right to self-defense, reserving it only for the elite class of citizen.

Annette Speakman
Mansfield

Click here to read the letter in the Mansfield News Journal.

Note: While we remain focused on passage of a concealed carry reform bill into law, OFCC representatives did make concerns with HB180 known to legislators. As this letter points out, 'the Second Amendment has never been about hunting, it is about the unalienable right to self-defense.' We have been told that HB180 has been "put on ice." and will not move before summer recess.