Supreme Court hears oral arguments on guns in parks

Oral arguments were held today in the case of Ohioans for Concealed Carry Inc. et. al v. City of Clyde et. al. [Case No. 07-0960]. The proceedings lasted for just under one hour.

Click here to watch a video archive of the hearing (RealPlayer required).

Excerpts of and links to media coverage of the proceedings will be added here as they are published.

Columbus Dispatch - Limits on guns in parks argued

Ohioans may be able to carry hidden firearms legally in a variety of public settings, but that right doesn't extend to city parks, an attorney for a small northern Ohio town told the state Supreme Court yesterday in a key test case of the state's 4-year-old concealed-carry law.

Gun-rights advocates said that if the city of Clyde's ordinance banning guns in public parks is upheld, other cities will begin shooting holes in the right to discreetly pack heat.

...Clyde, a city of 6,000 in Sandusky County, passed an ordinance banning guns in local parks shortly after the state law allowing concealed weapons took effect in early 2004. More than 100,000 concealed-carry permits have been issued since then.

Ohioans for Concealed Carry sued Clyde, arguing that cities can't make up their own gun laws that infringe on the overall right to carry hidden firearms. Exceptions, such as schools and hospitals, are defined by state law rather than local ordinances.

...Daniel T. Ellis, who represented Ohioans for Concealed Carry in court yesterday, said ordinances like Clyde's penalize only law-abiding citizens. He suggested that allowing licensed gun owners to take weapons to parks could deter crimes such as pedophilia.

"Have we forgotten that law-abiding people are in a partnership with the state and police to stop crime?" Ellis asked.

Supreme Court justices, who are all Republicans, appeared to split on some of the issues in the case.

Justice Paul E. Pfeifer said he's seen no evidence that allowing guns in parks has caused a plague of "little Rambos running around." But he also said he can't understand why someone would want to lug a gun around in a park, especially in the summer when it would be harder to conceal.

Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer pressed Ellis on whether there's any good reason to restrict cities from passing local laws intended to benefit their citizens. Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger asked Clyde attorney McDonald -- a former Democratic lawmaker from Licking County -- whether his argument would keep the legislature from enacting any statewide law on conceal/carry.

McDonald, who contended the Clyde ordinance is legal under Ohio's home-rule provisions, said he couldn't say that.

The Supreme Court's ruling is expected in several months.

Toledo Blade - Ohio Supreme Court justices weigh gun ordinances for cities

Several Ohio Supreme Court justices yesterday struggled with the question of whether cities have the right to prohibit guns in their parks.

More than one appeared to question choices made when lawmakers set out a patchwork of places where guns would be off limits under Ohio's 4-year-old law legalizing the carrying of concealed weapons in the state by licensed, law-abiding citizens.

"The General Assembly has made a lot of classifications that don't seem to make a lot of sense frankly," said Chief Justice Thomas Moyer. "That's our challenge here."

At issue is the Sandusky County city of Clyde's ordinance making it a crime to carry "deadly weapons" in city parks, an ordinance enacted after the state passed its law.

...The attorney for the city and a former state legislator, John C. McDonald, tried to keep the focus on local governments' constitutional right of home rule and whether the state law's patchwork of exceptions meant it could not be applied uniformly across Ohio.

But the broader debate over concealed carry and the constitutional right to carry guns couldn't help but bleed into the arguments.

"Have we forgotten that law-abiding people are in a partnership with the state and police to stop crime?" asked Daniel L. Ellis, attorney for Ohioans for Concealed Carry, the organization that successfully challenged Clyde's ordinance at the lower court level.

"The fundamental right to protect ourselves is just as important as the state's right to prevent crime," he said.

Justice Paul Pfeifer noted that he was unaware of any problems that have been created by the legalization of concealed carry in Ohio. But he went on to conjure up an image of a jogger strapping on a gun to his jogging shorts in a park. At one point he suggested that pedophiles are a greater danger in city parks and he drew laughs when he suggested a bullwhip might be a more appropriate weapon.

"What's the need to be packing in a public park?" he asked. "What's the compelling need?"

Ohioans for Concealed Carry has argued that allowing municipalities to adopt differing rules on where guns are allowed places gun owners at risk of inadvertently breaking the law whenever they cross municipal boundaries.

Mr. Ellis argues that, by making it a criminal misdemeanor to carry a gun in the park, the city had waded into police powers in violation of a statewide prohibition on gun laws deemed stricter than state or federal law.

"My concern again is whether this is truly a general law when it's riddled with these exceptions," Justice Judith Lanzinger told Mr. Ellis. "You want us to take a very broad view of what a general law is."