This is part of Sheriff Mack’s “No Sheriff Left Behind” Tour to 5 Ohio cities. The event takes place on Wednesday, March 10, 2010, from 6:30pm to 9:00pm at Wedgewood Country Club in Powell.
We ask for a small donation of $1, $5, $10, or $25 to help us cover our costs.
[UPDATE: This meeting has been cancelled due to inclement weather. Further hearing announcements will be posted at BuckeyeFirearms.org.] House Bill 158, which seeks to add instructors who are certified to teach courses…
For the better part of the past year, Buckeye Firearms Association has been warning against the potential re-emergence of Mike DeWine into Ohio politics.
We’ve cautioned that this is the same Mike DeWine who Human Events Online named among the Top 10 anti-gun U.S. Senators, noting that he was “consistently the only Republican to speak in favor of anti-2nd Amendment legislation on the Senate floor.”
We’ve reminded that this is the same Mike DeWine who, shortly before his defeat in 2006, took a position in opposition to legislation which barred gun manufacturers, distributors, dealers or importers from frivolous lawsuits designed to put them out of business.
We’ve observed that this is the same Mike DeWine who consistently cast his votes on the side of the most rabid anti-gun Democrats in the Senate.
We’ve written op-eds and distributed flyers. Our organization even made the largest donation we’ve ever made to a single candidate to his then-primary opponent, Dave Yost.
But the fact is, far too few people have even begun paying attention to the 2010 races. I have had conversations in the past few days with people who are general “up” on national politics, who had no idea that DeWine was even back on the scene, let alone emerging as the Ohio GOP’s nominee for attorney general. (And trust me, they weren’t pleased when they heard the news.)
Ohio youth turkey hunters can enter to win a dream hunt with Governor Ted Strickland or nationally-known hunting guides during the Governor’s Celebrity and Youth Turkey Hunt according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife.
To enter the contest, Ohio youth hunters must write an essay on the topic, “My Best Hunt Ever.” The essay must be typed and limited to 300 words. Youth hunters between the ages of 14 to 17 years old before March 1, 2010 are eligible to participate. All entries must be sent to the Division of Wildlife via the electronic submission form available at wildohio.com. Email entries will not be accepted. Past essay winners are not eligible to participate. Entries must be submitted by March 15.
Our readers will remember the horrific July 2004 beating of Joseph Scarpino by convicted felon Mark Jones which occurred while Mr. Scarpino waited in line at DaVinci’s Pizza Shop in Akron.
Mr. Jones was, at the time he administered the unprovoked beating, on two years probation for possession of cocaine and marijuana trafficking.
For those who do not remember, the video of the beating will surely jog your memory. (In perverse media fashion, this video-taped beating made a CBS News “Best of 2005” list.)
Even more horrifying than the beating of Mr. Scarpino was the reaction of the seven patrons present in the pizza shop during the beating – patrons who witnessed the entire exchange from start to finish. Their reaction? Ignore it.
This apathy played large in the media at the time, as Ohio just passed, after nearly 12 years of debate, a concealed carry law full of poison pills, and licenses were just then being issued, allowing the small number of initial, first-wave applicants to brave the terms of the burdensome law and go out into public while armed.
Mark Jones was convicted of felonious assault in February 2005 for the beating and sentenced to four years in prison. (As felonious assault carries a minimum two-year and maximum eight-year sentence in Ohio, Mr. Jones didn’t even reach the mid-range sentence of five years.) This would ordinarily be the end of a typical “if only an armed person had been present to stop the offender” story. However, while researching this case a little further in response to a class I taught, I discovered the story does not end there.
In a year when one word, “fewer,” described life in America — fewer jobs, fewer home sales, fewer purchases — hunters were responsible for generating a welcome “more” category, as hunting license sales rose by 3.5 percent in 2009 in states that make up NSSF’s Hunting License Sales Index.
The 12-state index comprises several states from four main regions of the United States. Nine of those states recorded hunting license sales increases from January through December of 2009 over the previous year, according to Southwick Associates, a research firm that monitored the license sales information.
Recently, the Chicago Tribune published a story profiling Otis McDonald, a 76 year-old African American, Democrat and hunter whose name is featured on the gun rights case McDonald v. City of Chicago that will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court later this year.
From behind the wheel of his hulking GMC Suburban, 76-year-old Otis McDonald leads a crime-themed tour of his Morgan Park neighborhood.
Photo by Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune / January 13, 2010
He points to the yellow brick bungalow he says is a haven for drug dealers. Down the street is the alley where five years ago he saw a teenager pull out a gun and take aim at a passing car.
Around the corner, he gestures to the weed-bitten roadside where three thugs once threatened his life.
“I know every day that I come out in the streets, the youngsters will shoot me as quick as they will a policeman,” says McDonald, a trim man with a neat mustache and closely cropped gray hair. “They’ll shoot a policeman as quick as they will any of their young gangbangers.”
Last week, news that Ohio Republican Party Chair Kevin DeWine successfully maneuvered a pro-gun candidate out of his party’s primary race for attorney general, thus giving his anti-gun cousin Mike an unopposed run, rocked pro-gun voters across the Buckeye State.
This week, apparently not wanting to be out-done, Democrats took their turn at shafting pro-gun voters in their party primary race for Secretary of State.
According to news reports, State Representative Jennifer Garrison (D-93), a former Buckeye Firearms Association-endorsee, has been essentially forced out of the Democrat primary by party leaders concerned about her stance on gun rights, among certain other issues. The move all but ensures that the anti-gun candidate, Franklin Co. Clerk of Courts Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, will be unopposed in the Democratic primary.