BLUF
The study just says what Second Amendment advocates have long asserted: Law-abiding gun owners are not the problem when it comes to gun crimes.

Ohio Just Disproved a Gun-Control Talking Point

DAVE YOST is Ohio’s 51st attorney general.

The mayor stood, frowning and grim, flanked by uniformed police officers. Another horrific gun crime had occurred — and it was all the fault of the state legislators who had recently repealed the law requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, what proponents call “constitutional carry.”

“The Republican-led legislature in Columbus passed SB 215 and across this state from Cleveland to Columbus to Cincinnati, you see an uptick in shootings across our state. . . . It’s important that we hold them accountable for passing dangerous gun laws in our state,” the mayor said, his angry voice rising above the roar of nearby freeway traffic.

“The most reckless and . . . careless gun policy in the state’s history,” the mayor said.

“It’s creating an arms race where people don’t feel safe unless they have a gun. So guns beget more guns, which, unfortunately, makes us all unsafe,” the mayor said.

But which mayor? The first quote was from Mayor Justin Bibb of Cleveland. The second one is from Mayor Andrew Ginther of Columbus. The arms-race quote was from Aftab Pureval, mayor of Cincinnati, on National Public Radio.

Ohio’s three biggest cities — they all got in with the same message: It’s not our fault; it’s the new state law.

There was only one problem: It wasn’t true.

My office commissioned a study with Bowling Green State University to examine gun crime in Ohio’s eight largest cities the year before the law changed — June 13, 2022 — and the year afterward. The conclusion: Eliminating concealed-carry licenses had no impact on gun crimes, and in six of the eight cities, gun crimes actually declined.

I honestly did not know what the data would show, but a study seemingly would be useful for the ongoing debate either way. The numbers could have increased — gun crime, like any other crime, has multiple causes. And it wouldn’t have been surprising if the numbers had stayed the same, because a great deal of the action taken by government seems to have marginal impacts, if any.

But the numbers went down.

In Parma, gun crimes dropped by a whopping 22 percent after constitutional carry; Akron and Toledo both saw declines of 18 percent; and Columbus logged a 12 percent reduction. Canton and Cleveland had single-digit percentage decreases. Cincinnati and Dayton both had single-digit percentage increases.

Over the entire eight-city sample, gun crime dropped by 8 percent. Shot Spotter technology, which detects the sound of a gunshot in a city, produced data that was consistent with the reported crimes where it was available.

Granted, it was a single year. We will update the study as time goes on. But a year’s data is statistically significant, particularly where the effect is so broadly observed across the various cities — Cincinnati, often called America’s northernmost Southern city, couldn’t be more culturally different from Cleveland with its East Coast vibe.

During the legislative debate, the term “Wild West” came up repeatedly in predictions about Ohio’s future under the new law. It turns out that Ohio is just the Midwest, full of common sense and largely lacking itchy trigger fingers.

They mayors’ misplaced game of blame and shame ought to be replaced with tactics that are proven to work. Gun crime needs proactive policing — taking the criminals who use guns for crime off the streets. A thug in prison does not mug innocent citizens or conduct drive-by shootings.

This study does not mean that gun violence is not a problem. I’ve sat with the victims and survivors of gun violence, and prosecuted the shooters — their stories are real, and tragic, and a failure of public leadership.

But the answer is in proactive policing — prosecuting offenses that are now often ignored or probationable, such as possession of a weapon when prohibited; “flooding the zone” with surged, targeted enforcement; and, most of all, sentencing the small number of criminals who use guns to prison terms long enough to keep them off the streets.

The study just says what Second Amendment advocates have long asserted: Law-abiding gun owners are not the problem when it comes to gun crimes.