On track for the next permitless carry state?<\/p>\n
Ohio House committee passes bill allowing for concealed carry of guns without training<\/a><\/p>\n COLUMBUS, Ohio \u2014 An Ohio House committee passed legislation Thursday that would allow most Ohioans who are 21 years of age and up to lawfully carry a concealed firearm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Current law allows Ohioans to carry concealed weapons after completing eight hours of training and submitting an application to their county sheriff, who conducts a background check.\u00a0House Bill 227<\/a>, if passed, would remove the training and application requirements for anyone who is of age and not prohibited from carrying a weapon by state or federal law.<\/p>\n Over each of the last six years, about 3,900 concealed carry permits on average were either suspended, revoked or denied, according to data from the Ohio Attorney General.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The legislation would also remove Ohioans\u2019 duty under current law to notify police officers that they\u2019re carrying a weapon if they\u2019re stopped in traffic. HB 227 only requires them to notify officers about the weapon if they\u2019re asked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Passing \u201cpermitless carry,\u201d as the legislation is commonly referred to, would forward a steady march of loosening Ohio\u2019s gun laws. Ohio’s concealed carry program\u00a0launched in 2004<\/a>\u00a0and required 12 hours of training at the time. In 2006, lawmakers passed a bill\u00a0blocking cities from passing gun control laws<\/a>\u00a0stricter than those of the state at large. Republicans\u00a0passed a “stand your ground” bill last year<\/a>\u00a0that removes the legal duty to first seek retreat from a confrontation before responding with deadly force.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The push toward permitless carry comes as gun violence hits record highs. In 2021 so far, 694 people have been killed and nearly 1,600 have been injured in shootings in Ohio, according to\u00a0data from the Gun Violence Archive<\/a>, which tracks media reports of shootings around the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The legislation passed without much fanfare from Ohio\u2019s House Government Oversight Committee. House Majority Leader Bill Seitz, R-Green Twp., said he was convinced of the need to pass the legislation by gun lobbyists from the National Rifle Association and the Buckeye Firearms Association.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rep. Tim Ginter, a Salem Republican who also works as an ordained minister, mentioned that the legislation clarifies that people can carry concealed weapons in a house of worship, as many of his parishioners do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf you attend the church that I pastor, just be aware that there\u2019s probably a lot of people in there with handguns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n House Democrats on the committee opposed the legislation. They tried, without success, to amend two anti-gun violence provisions into the bill. One would require background checks to purchase firearms at gun shows and from private sellers. Another would allow judges, if petitioned by family or law enforcement, to temporarily seize weapons from people experiencing mental health crises.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rep. Paula Hicks-Hudson, the ranking Democrat on the committee, called the legislation \u201cshort-sighted\u201d and divisive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis extreme legislation doesn\u2019t make Ohio any more gun friendly,\u201d she said. \u201cInstead, it makes it a lot less safe for all of us, including gun owners.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The gun lobby has been pushing for permitless carry in Ohio for at least 10 to 15 years, according to Buckeye Firearms Association\u2019s top lobbyist Rob Sexton. In an interview, he framed the issue around the constitutional right to bear arms and downplayed the existence of a relationship between loosened gun laws and gun violence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe law has been liberalized over the last 15 years toward the goal of fully realizing what the Constitution says, and we still haven\u2019t seen the corresponding bad behavior by regular, law abiding gun owners,\u201d he said. \u201cSo no, I don\u2019t believe this change will make that happen either.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Ohio, the state supreme court holds that the constitutional right to bear arms does not guarantee the right to carry a concealed weapon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere is no constitutional right to bear concealed weapons,\u201d wrote Justice Paul Pfeifer in a 2003\u00a0majority opinion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The U.S. Supreme Court is also\u00a0set to hear oral arguments Nov. 3<\/a>\u00a0on the constitutionality of a New York law restricting concealed carrying of weapons in the state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Richelle O\u2019Connor, an activist with Moms Demand Action, said the outcomes of the policy are simple: More people with guns they aren\u2019t trained how to use equals more gun violence.<\/p>\n \u201cIf more guns made us safe, then we would be the safest country in the industrialized nation, and we are not,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After the hearing, Moms Demand Action issued a news release citing two studies linking permitless carry laws to increases in violent crime. A\u00a02018 working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research<\/a>\u00a0authored by researchers from Stanford and Columbia universities found states with permitless carry laws experience roughly 15% higher rates of violent crime 10 years after adoption than they otherwise would have. Other\u00a0research published in the American Journal for Public Health<\/a>\u00a0found that permitless carry laws were associated with 11% increases in handgun homicide rates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Twenty-one states allow inhabitants (residents only in North Dakota) to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, according to a\u00a0count from the U.S Concealed Carry Association<\/a>. This includes neighboring states of West Virginia and Kentucky.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Permitless carry bills are advancing in other conservative-controlled statehouses around the U.S. including\u00a0Wisconsin<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Alabama<\/a>\u00a0and recently passed in\u00a0Tennessee<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On track for the next permitless carry state? Ohio House committee passes bill allowing for concealed carry of guns without training COLUMBUS, Ohio \u2014 An Ohio House committee passed legislation Thursday that would allow most Ohioans who are 21 years of age and up to lawfully carry a concealed firearm. Current law allows Ohioans to … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73756,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73755\/revisions\/73756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}