Author: Buckeye Firearms Association

by Chad D. Baus The Toledo Blade is reporting that a local gun shop’s sponsorship of a youth baseball team in Bedford Township, just across the border from Toledo in Michigan, has…

by Chad D. Baus

The Huffington Post is circulating an email to Ohio residents seeking to “document the nationwide impact of gun violence.”

Wednesday, April 24, 2013
A Message From The Huffington Post

Hello from HuffPost Open Reporting –

This is a one-time email to our readers in Ohio.

We’re working on a project to document the nationwide impact of gun violence, and we need your help.

Since the shooting in Newtown, Conn., on December 14, The Huffington Post has tracked and recorded more than 2,240 deaths across America as a result of gun-related homicides and accidental shootings.

If you or someone you know has ever been affected by gun violence, we want to hear your story.

Give us a call at 860-348-3376, and you can record your story in your own words. Please be sure to include your name and phone number. Or you can send us a note at openreporting@huffingtonpost.com (or just reply to this email).

We will never publish your name or any identifying details without your permission.

Thanks for your help,
The HuffPost Open Reporting Team

While we suspect that this liberal news media outlet is seeking to collect the same type of anti-gun rights rhetoric that BarackObama.com and the President’s campaign arm Organizing for Action sought to collect back in February, we thought it might be worth sending them a little information on the other side of the coin – namely on how the use of guns has contributed to saving and protecting lives.

Research shows firearms are used to protect lives as many as two million times every year. “Armed citizen” accounts are published in gun rights magazines monthly. There are also entire websites and blogs devoted to sharing these stories.

Here at BuckeyeFirearms.org, a complete list of known incidents involving Ohio CHL-holders defending themselves is available here.

And yet the BarackObama.com folks haven’t see fit to post even one “gun violence” story that shows the benefits of an armed citizenry, nor do I expect The Huffington Post to.

Since I have little expectation it will ever be published at HuffPo, I thought I’d share a message sent to openreporting@huffingtonpost.com by Buckeye Firearms Association Chairman Jim Irvine:

by Chad D. Baus

WHIO (CBS Dayton) is reporting that “churches across the country and here in the Miami Valley are responding to violence by putting their trust in God and taking security into their own hands.”

From the article:

At Phillips Temple in Trotwood, armed security guards routinely patrol the church grounds and stand watch inside during services and events. It is a visible presence that Pastor James Washington considers a necessary deterrent from evil.

“The Bible calls it lawlessness. It’s just a complete disregard for what’s right and wrong and what’s legal and what’s not,” said Washington.

Police cruisers surrounded an Ashtabula, Ohio church on Easter Sunday after a man walked in with a handgun and fatally shot his own father. There were 135 deadly force incidents at places of worship across the country in 2012. Four people have died in 11 shooting incidents so far this year.

“Let’s get people trained and certified so that if we have a serious incident here, we can respond immediately,” said Mark Stusek, a church security consultant.

Stusek, a retired Dayton Police Officer, founded Glory-2-God Solutions, designing special classes for pastors and church leaders.The students not only qualify for their concealed carry licenses, but they become Certified Security Officers trained on how and when to engage an active shooter.

Jon Faulkner of Beavercreek said, “People are trying to evaluate circumstances they find themselves day in and day out at work, church, even their home, the mall and trying to figure out if something went wrong, what would I do?”

Toby Hoover, who often appears to be a one-woman show at the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, is quoted as saying that having trained, armed church-goers provides nothing but “a false sense of security.” (Unfortunately, the reporter who recorded the quote apparently failed to ask Hoover if she thought it was a “false sense of security” that saved potentially hundreds of lives at New Life Church in Colorado.)

This isn’t Hoover’s first such attempt to insert herself into discussions over the measures places of worship should take to protect their members.

by Jeff Knox

The state of Illinois is the only state in the union that does not offer provisions for regular citizens – those who are not law enforcement or security guards – to carry a gun in public.

Last December, the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled that the ban is unconstitutional and gave the state 180 days to come up with an acceptable framework for citizen carry. Now, if the legislature and governor do not implement a plan June 8 of this year, the laws banning carry will simply become null and void effectively giving the state “Constitutional Carry,” i.e. unregulated carrying such as currently exists in Vermont, Alaska, and Arizona. Chances of that happening are slim, however the journey from the current prohibition to the final system promises to be an interesting journey.

Illinois citizens have been fighting for years for the right to carry legally. Several times in the past few years have come close, but each time it has been shot down by the Chicago-Cook County political gangsters. So the citizens in “downstate” Illinois – everywhere outside of the Chicago area – which is mostly stereotypical small town, middle-America, have been held hostage by the powers that be in the state’s urban center.

In order to get at least some form of lawful defensive carry available to regular citizens, rights advocates in Illinois have worked diligently building coalitions, making concessions, and agreeing to all manner of strict limitations, exorbitant fees, and overbearing government control over a concealed carry licensing system. Their hope was that once any form of concealed carry was authorized, citizens, police, and politicians would see that legally armed citizens were a benefit, not a risk – just as has been proven in the other 49 states – and possibly the law could then be improved. That approach made sense when Chicago held all the cards, but times have changed. With the 7th Circuit’s decision, Illinois rights advocates are now in total control – or at least they should be.

Rather than taking advantage of the dramatic shift in leverage provided by the 7th Circuit’s ruling, leaders of the rights movement in the state seem to be stuck in the rut they’ve carved over the past 50 years. They have continued trying to curry favor with police groups and skeptical politicians, even though there is no advantage in doing so. In fact, the demands of the leading rights organizations in the state have barely shifted since the 7th Circuit’s decision was handed down. To their credit, rights supporters have drawn a line in the sand on “shall issue” (which requires authorities to issue a license to anyone who meets the statutory requirements) versus “may issue” (which gives local law enforcement discretion to deny a license for almost any reason – or no reason at all), but they continue to agree to excessive fees, extensive – and expensive – training requirements, intrusive and redundant background checks, and dangerous requirements such as a duty to alert police to one’s lawfully concealed firearm.

This last item is particularly troublesome for gun owners living in the Chicago area where the Chief of Police has declared that his officers will treat any armed person as a serious threat until the person can prove otherwise. That means the police are likely to draw their guns, put the person face-down on the ground, frisk, handcuff, and detain them until they can find and verify the person’s carry permit – even when the only clue the police have that the person has a gun is that person’s obligatory statement to them that they are legally carrying.