Author: Buckeye Firearms Association

SAF challenges interstate handgun sales ban

Posted on by Buckeye Firearms Association

The Second Amendment Foundation [has] filed suit in U.S. District Court in Virginia challenging the constitutionality of federal and Virginia provisions barring handgun sales to non-residents.

SAF is joined in the lawsuit by Michelle Lane, a District of Columbia resident who cannot legally purchase handguns because there are no retail firearms dealers inside the District. The Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller ruling struck down the District’s handgun ban, confirming that individuals have a constitutional right to possess handguns.

Chicago’s Daley a hypocrite to the bitter end

Posted on by Buckeye Firearms Association

Having retired from office on Wednesday, May 18, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley remains a monumental hypocrite to the bitter end and his request for publicly-financed armed bodyguards proves it, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said recently.

As Daley prepared to leave office, a Washington Times editorial bared the anti-gun Democrat’s hypocrisy. For years, Daley has had armed bodyguards protecting him at the same time he has worked fanatically to deprive his Chicago constituents and every other citizen in Illinois the same level of security, by pushing every crazy anti-gun scheme he or his colleagues could dream up. Now he wants that same privilege to carry into retirement.

“Despite the city’s loss before the U.S. Supreme Court last year in McDonald v. City of Chicago – the landmark case won by the Second Amendment Foundation – Daley has continued to throw every roadblock possible in the path of law-abiding citizens who want to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “They only want to feel the same sense of safety that Daley has enjoyed, at their expense, for years.

“If Daley wants armed bodyguards,” he continued, “then he needs to pay for them out of his own pocket. If one penny of public money is spent for Daley’s security, it will be an outrage.”

Another Year, Another Meaningless Brady Scorecard

Posted on by Buckeye Firearms Association

It’s that time of year again — the time when the Brady Campaign releases its annual scores and rankings, lavishing praise on state governments that infringe upon the rights of their citizens and scorn on those that respect the Constitution. This year, the occasion was met with about as much enthusiasm as that other spring ritual, the income tax filing deadline. If this is the first you’re hearing of the new rankings, let’s hope that’s because the mainstream media has finally come to its senses about this annual publicity stunt.

As it has since 1997, the Brady Campaign’s grading system works by assigning points to a state based on whether it has adopted a specific type of gun control law. The Brady Campaign then assigns each state a grade — now measured in “stars,” undoubtedly because percentage grades would show that the group has been unable to prevent most states from failing its test. Most states receive fewer than 10 points and no stars.

The group does not try to measure the effectiveness of any of these laws when assigning points and grades, instead implying that simply having laws restricting the right to keep and bear arms somehow makes a state better and safer. This, of course, is a false premise. Measuring restrictive laws simply for the sake of having restrictive laws only assesses a state government’s lack of respect for the rights of its citizenry.

This “more is better” gun law fallacy is evidenced when the Brady Campaign gives states points for restricting the Right to Carry and punishes with “demerits” (negative points) those states that don’t require permits. Today, 37 states have “shall issue” permit systems and as of July 1, 2011 three of those states will also allow for permitless carry (as does Vermont, which has no permit system). This has resulted in an estimated 6 million Americans exercising this right. With all of these “guns in public places,” in 2009 the country experienced a 39-year low in its violent rate crime and a 45-year low in its murder rate, according to the FBI. These historic lows also occurred in the absence of a federal “assault weapons” ban, a law for which the Brady Campaign awards yet more points at the state level.

Guns are not allowed in Restaurants: The forensic examination of the anti-gun claims

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by Ken Hanson, Esq.

Ohio has now passed bills in the House and Senate that would allow concealed carry licensees to carry firearms in liquor facilities. Since this legislative action is contrary to the editorial position of Ohio’s major newspapers, and since editors such as The Columbus Dispatch‘s Joe Hallett cannot allow facts to interfere with their own biases, it is left to Buckeye Firearms’ volunteers to refute the idiocy.

Yesterday we received several frantic phone calls asking for articles, links etc. backing up our claims that most states allow carry of firearms into restaurants that serve alcohol. These calls, of course, came after hours, so that we got to spend time away from our families to address the calls.

During the debate over the House and Senate versions of these bills, those opposed to the bills (i.e. the Fraternal Order of Police, the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police, the Toledo Blade, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Columbus Dispatch etc. etc.) tried to paint gun owners as liars for claiming that 42 states allowed carry of firearms in restaurants that served alcohol.

Please note that I do not include the Ohio Restaurant Association among those opposed to the bills. They were thrown out as a red herring earlier in the debate, and were all but ignored from Day One by Buckeye Firearms Association. A group like the ORA, that makes no donations, puts up no yard signs and makes no phone calls is not a legitimate source of opposition to your rights.

Unfortunately, those testifying, and those editorializing in opposition to these bills fell into the trap that most anti-gun groups set – their statistics are hyper-technical and don’t withstand any serious scrutiny. Those who rely on statistics from groups like Brady, Violence Policy Center or Legal Community Against Violence are often ashamed when they are called out on their sources.

Numerous newspaper reports and editorials fell into this trap, disputing the pro-gun group claims that 42 states allowed carry of firearms in restaurants.

Please allow me to walk you through the genesis of this trap. It is really quite simple. The antis use the word “bar” and we use the word “restaurant.”

New Study Points to Truth About Mexican Cartels’ Guns

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The Woodrow Wilson International Center, which previously accepted as fact that incredible numbers of newly purchased firearms were being smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico, has just released a report showing that the numbers have been incredibly exaggerated. The revelation shifts the blame for Mexico’s drug cartel problem away from America’s “lax” gun laws, and squarely in the direction of Mexican officials and Central American weapons smugglers.

According to the report, Mexican President Felipe Calderon “[S]aid Mexico had seized about 90,000 arms . . . . [B]ut ATF now reports that tens of thousands of the trace requests are duplicates. In some cases, ATF has received information on the same firearm up to five times as Mexican police, a crime lab, the military, and the Attorney General’s office all write down information on the same firearm, and the individual in the Attorney General’s office in Mexico City submits trace requests on all of them. Of the remaining firearms, the Mexican government has also failed to sometimes include basic information about the firearms such as the manufacture’s serial number or the import number on many [of] these firearms.”

Furthermore, “about 26 percent of Mexico’s trace requests to the U.S. government for FY 2009 were untraceable because of serial number errors” and “75 percent of the firearms ATF was able to trace to the first purchaser in the United States were purchased more than five years ago.”

While Pres. Calderon regularly blames America for Mexico’s problem, “ATF officials . . . have sought to physically inspect firearms at crime scenes or at Mexican military storage facilities, but have had limited success, mostly because Mexican officials or the Mexican Attorney General’s office prevented such access, due in part to national sensitivities and lack of trust.”

“Mentor man’s guns are confiscated after he calls police for help” – More proof of need for Restoration of Rights legislation

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by Chad D. Baus

While Restaurant and Car Carry Rules Fix legislation has garnered almost exclusive attention of the media and the gun ban lobby in Ohio, another piece of important pro-gun legislation has also been passed by strong, bi-partisan majorities in the Ohio House and Senate.

HB54 and SB61, Ohio’s Restoration of Rights legisation, will align Ohio law with federal statutes regarding the restoration of rights to Ohio firearms purchasers.

Due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) has stopped accepting Ohio’s court orders restoring a citizen’s right to own firearms. The purpose of this bill is to update Ohio’s statutes to address this issue and protect Ohio citizens’ legal rights under the law.

Ken Hanson, Legislative Chair of Buckeye Firearms Association, has explained the need for the legislation as follows:

“Someone who has been legally buying firearms, in some cases for many years after they received a legal Ohio restoration, may suddenly discover that he or she is back under a firearm disability because Ohio’s restoration of their firearm rights was not deemed complete by Federal authorities. The proposed bill realigns Ohio’s law with new Federal enforcement rules to effectively get the same result that has been working in Ohio for years.”

Before the House passed House Bill 54 (Restoration of Rights), Republican Reps. Ron Maag and Jarrod Martin sought to put a face on the issue.

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