Time to close the “Public Safety Loophole”

By Tim Inwood

In April 2007 we saw the worst school shooting in American history. Students were lined up against the wall and shot to death like cattle at Virginia Tech. These scholars stood meekly and could do nothing to fight back, as school policy had disarmed them and for obeying this idiotic rule they died.

Ten months later, it seems bureaucrats and policy makers around the country have learned nothing from that tragedy or others like it. In recent months we have seen mass shootings at malls, churches, stores and schools, all over the United States. On Valentine’s Day, we saw the fourth school shooting in a week take place at Northern Illinois University, where a deranged man using a shotgun and two handguns shot over 15 people and killed seven.

All of these incidents have one thing in common. They took place in mandated “Gun Free Zones” where the victims were disarmed by law.

The anti-gun elites answer this with a demand for more gun control laws. I have already gotten email from the Brady’s demanding we close “the gun show loophole.”

At a time when the country confronts one mass shooting after another — six separate multiple murders across the country in just the last two weeks — we need to strengthen America's gun laws now more than ever. Over the years, the Brady Campaign has proposed numerous common-sense measures to reduce and prevent gun violence. It may be difficult to stop 'suicide shooters' like the Northern Illinois University killer, but there are steps we can take as a nation to make us all safer. Congress' passing and the President's signing of the NICS improvement Amendments Act to strengthen the Brady background checks system was a positive first step. Now, we need to close the gun show loophole.”

These obtuse ninnies don’t get it. Guns are not the problem. Heck, additional gun control is certainly not the answer. Illinois has some of the most restrictive laws in the nation. The current restrictions are part of the problem; this foolishness mandating that people be unarmed in a world with deranged maniacs and criminals is the issue. That, my friends, is a policy to be rejected.

The anti-gun groups are quite happy with the fact no one but the gunman was armed. They tout Illinois as an ideal state since itis one of the few that still denies their citizens the right to carry their guns for defense at all. Another pile of bodies and they still do not see their folly. I have already heard several dolts on the television say something along the lines of “Well, if there had been other armed
people there innocents might have gotten shot" ...These morons have already forgotten the story of Jeanne Assam who was armed and stopped a deranged man at the
New Life Church in Colorado. I would hate to think how many additional souls would have been murdered that day had she not been there. Jeanne’s story is an inspiration of what the armed citizen can do to protect their fellow Americans in such a crisis. One thing the hoplophobes cannot deny, had someone in that lecture hall been armed, there might have been far fewer people killed.

For far too long we have suffered having criminal protection zones, places we cannot carry our firearms for defense. This must end. Anyone with a concealed carry license has undergone a background check and has had training. We are trustworthy law-abiding citizens, our lives are of value, and to deny us the ability to have our arms to defend ourselves anywhere is immoral! The time to pull down the little signs with the red slash through a handgun is now. Ohio’s legislative bodies need to repeal the no carry zones from state law now. It is time to close the “Public Safety Loophole.”

Use the Write to Legislators feature on this website to contact your State Representative, State Senator and Governor Strickland and demand the Public Safety Loophole be closed now, along with passage of Castle Doctrine legislation. The current limits on where we can carry our firearms for our defense endanger us all. Let these ridiculous restrictions, put in place to mollify those immature imbeciles with their irrational fear of guns, be repealed today. Their stupidity has cost too many lives already. Let us repeal it now so we, and our fellow Buckeyes, will never have to see this sort of tragedy happen here. Do it so we will be safer. My friends, make those calls and write those letters today.

---Special thanks to my friend and BFA volunteer Jeffry K. Smith for his assistance in the development of this commentary.---

Tim Inwood is the current Legislative Liaison and Past President of the Clinton County Farmers and Sportsmen's Association, an Endowment Member of the NRA, Life Member of OGCA, and a volunteer for Buckeye Firearms Association.