MORE pro-self-defense letters to editors!

Concealed-carry ban offends good citizens
Cincy Enquirer
October 6, 2003

I'm offended, and every law-abiding citizen in Ohio should be too. Why? There were 45 states with some kind of concealed-carry law and the crime has gone down in most of those states.

Either our lawmakers don't want crime to go down or they think the citizens of Ohio are more dangerous than people of the other 45 states.

Jim Ferrell, Mason

Concealed carry ruling is myopic
Toledo Blade
October 7, 2003

I wasn’t surprised to see a Blade editorial crowing about an Ohio Supreme Court ruling that the regulation of concealed firearms is not unconstitutional. The lawsuit brought by the Hamilton County plaintiffs was poorly conceived and executed.

No one - other than a few radicals - has ever claimed that some type of firearm regulation is unconstitutional. What the majority of Ohioans are saying is the current outright prohibition against carrying concealed weapons, rather than the regulation of it by reasonable standards, is myopic - even idiotic. It is even more pathetic in view of the experience in 44 other states where CCW rules have been relaxed so as to be within reach of the average citizen: Crime rates have plummeted and there has been no wave of "Dodge City shootouts" as the anti-gun lobby had predicted.

The Blade’s statement that there is a grass-roots effort to pressure legislators "to broaden the constitutional right to bear arms to include a new right to bear concealed weapons anywhere without governmental interference" is just plain nonsense. The pro-gun lobby agrees that firearm regulation is important; there are many people such as felons, juveniles, and the mentally incompetent who should be denied access to firearms. But that regulation should not extend to honest, law-abiding citizens who can meet reasonable standards of competency with a firearm.

The court did note that the state constitution says: "The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security." But if we can’t carry them, then we can’t very well protect ourselves with them, can we? Ohio does not need an absence of gun legislation; it needs the same reasonable gun legislation found in [45]other states.

RICH IOTT
Monclova