Letter to the Editor: Don’t punish all citizens for Case shootings

An excellent letter to the editor has been published in the Toledo Blade. The only thing we wonder is why Mr. Stevens has been trying to "stay out of the debate"!

May 21, 2003

"I have tried, at least publicly, to stay out of the "concealed-carry" controversy.

However, I cannot idly sit by without responding to an article regarding the shooting at Case Western Reserve University. It is the ultimate audacity to even suggest that passing a concealed-carry law could/would have had any effect on that, or any other situation involving lawbreakers. What "average" citizens want is to be treated like adult, law-abiding citizens who are given the same privileges as our fellow citizens in most of the United States - that is the "right" to bear arms.

Lawbreakers have never followed the law, nor will they follow concealed-carry. Bad people are going to kill with guns, knives, bricks, or whatever, regardless of how many laws are on the books. To suggest that limiting the right of upstanding law-abiding citizens of Ohio to carry weapons will somehow result in lawbreakers’ becoming law-abiding citizens is beyond my scope of understanding. Educate me, please. How is it that only four of our states continue to choose to deny their citizens of their constitutional right to bear arms? Let’s look at the other 46: Have their crime limits increased? Have ordinary, law-abiding citizens suddenly become crazed killers because they are allowed to conceal-carry? How ridiculous!

It is past time for Ohio to come into the 21st century. Allow law-abiding Ohio citizens the same right, and trust, that other states have given their citizens. The controversy seems much ado about nothing. The very citizens who would obey the law become the victims of the state refusing to extend to us the right to bear arms.

DAN J. STEVENS
Locust Street