Public records show scant participation in Cleveland’s voluntary gun registration scheme; Police unaware of any crimes solved

Posted on by Buckeye Firearms Association

by Larry S. Moore

On May 25, 2011, the City of Cleveland finally lost in the attempt to be a medieval city/state and continue to flaunt Ohio’s statewide preemption of gun laws. However, since the city leadership never met a gun control scheme they didn’t like, they soon concocted a voluntary handgun registration program.

The process involved:

  • Applicants will need to bring a photo identification, specifically a government issued driver’s license, passport, Ohio identification card or military identification
  • All applicants should bring all handguns unloaded and securely wrapped to the police district of their choice.
  • A police officer will verify the applicant’s identification, verify the make, model, caliber and serial number of the weapon and do a record check on the gun.

This led us to ask several questions, including who would be naïve enough to bring their guns to Cleveland authorities for what amounts to a voluntary criminal investigation. If the investigation turns up nothing, the handgun owner will make an appointment to have a photo taken and pay a fee for a totally unnecessary registration process.

When I first learned of this scheme, I thought there were several problems with the process. First, citizen owned firearms are prohibited in police stations per Ohio Revised Code. Second, why is giving the city a photo identification for a gun a good idea when it’s been determined that a photo ID cannot be required to vote? Finally, I wondered just how this program is working. So I decided to submit a public records request to the City of Cleveland. Let the nightmare begin!

Society of Professional Journalists ethics committee chair takes dim view of advocacy journalism at Columbus Dispatch and beyond

Posted on by Buckeye Firearms Association

by Chad D. Baus

In the wake of a series of articles, entitled “Overrun by guns”, written by Theodore Decker and published in The Columbus Dispatch in late May, I exposed the fact that the articles were bought and paid for by the anti-gun rights Joyce Foundation, and were in fact written with the goal of having a “major public policy impact” on gun violence in Ohio.

In that article, I noted that the Code of Ethics for the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) states that “Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.”

After my article “Journalists for hire, ethics be damned: Anti-gun Joyce Foundation grant funds media “studies” pushing gun control” was published, I was invited to discuss it on several media outlets across the country, including David Codrea’s “War on Guns” radio program (since our interview Codrea discovered that another subsidized ‘reporter’ had presented a fraudulent accounting of gun ‘costs’ as “Breaking News” to San Jose Mercury News readers), as well as Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk®.

During my June 12 interview on Gun Talk®, host Tom Gresham inquired if I had contacted the SPJ directly about what I had discovered concerning The Dispatch‘s advocacy journalism and money-laundering scheme (they failed to report where the money really came from, noting only that it was a grant from the John Jay College Center on Media, Crime and Justice). While I had not yet done so, Gresham’s idea was an excellent one, and so a couple of weeks after my interview on Gun Talk®, I sent an inquiry to the SPJ.

Families offered free day at the range

Posted on by Buckeye Firearms Association

Family Outdoor Skills Day September 17th

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife is sponsoring a Family Outdoor Skills Day on Saturday September 17, 2011. The event will feature shotgun, rifle, pellet gun and archery shooting activities and instruction. This family-friendly day will be held at Spring Valley Shooting Range in Greene County from noon to 5:00pm. All range fees are waived for the event participants and the equipment andammunition will be provided.

“This event will provide an excellent opportunityfor adults and youth alike to gain hands on training with archery and firearms at no charge from certified instructors at one of Ohio’s premier public shooting ranges,” said David Kohler, District Five Wildlife Management Supervisor.

The Outdoor Skills Day has been an annual event at the range since 2002 with about 125 participants taking part yearly. Certified instructors will be on hand to help teach safe and responsible shooting and handling techniques. Snacks and water will also be provided by the Tecumseh Territory Chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation. The range complex at Spring Valley is handicap accessible and offers public restrooms.

“By offering this day at the range we hope to provide an opportunity for families to come out and try the shooting sports without investing a lot of money, get certified instruction and to make a few memories as well,” said Scott Phillips, Spring Valley Area Manager.

The Spring Valley Range is located just south of Xenia at 3450 Houston Rd., Waynesville, OH 45068. For information or directions please call the District Five office at (937)372-9261 or Spring Valley Wildlife Area office (937) 488-3115, range (937)862-5162.

For an updated list of firearms-related events in and around Ohio, click here.

Questioning “No Questions Asked” – Are Gun-Surrender Gimmicks Legal?

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by Jeff Knox

For decades we’ve heard about gun turn-ins – “Gun Buy-Back” programs sponsored by churches, civic groups, and various other misinformed do-gooder organizations. The very name – buy-back – implies that guns belong not to individuals, but to the government, or at least to the people who don’t like guns. The programs have the stated purpose of “getting guns off the street,” which seems to give operators a pass from further scrutiny, even as they offer a tangible good such as a grocery store coupon or gift card in return for a gun, “no questions asked,” much like any other fencing operation. Finally someone has forced the question: Are these programs legal?

Attorney and author of the New Jersey Gun Law Guide, Evan Nappen, not only asked the question, he is offering a $5000 bounty for anyone who can prove an affirmative answer. Nappen is specifically asking about the legality of a church-sponsored program in the state of New Jersey. As an expert on New Jersey gun laws Nappen says he can find no provision in the state’s maze-like gun statutes that permit churches and civic groups, or the people surrendering (actually selling) the guns, to by-pass the thicket of New Jersey state laws that require permits, background checks, and paperwork whenever a gun is transported or transferred.

Mr. Nappen also questions the “no questions asked” policy, and the immediate destruction of the guns, which might be stolen property, or could be evidence in serious crimes. Details of Nappen’s challenge can be seen on his web site, www.EvanNappen.com.

ATF Rewards Agents Who Ran “Fast and Furious” and Then Helped Cover It Up

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In what can only be described as “Washington D.C. logic,” the three BATFE agents who were responsible for the “Fast and Furious” debacle in Phoenix have been promoted.

You read that right, promoted! Not reprimanded, not demoted and certainly not fired, but given bigger jobs with more responsibility and more pay.

Each of the agents now have high profile positions in D.C. William Newell is now special assistant to the assistant director of the agency’s Office of Management, David Voth has been made branch chief for the BATFE’s tobacco division.

And if those two promotions seem hard to understand, the third is particularly hard to fathom. William G. McMahon, who had been the BATFE’s deputy director of operations in the West, has been made the deputy assistant director of the Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations. That is the division within BATFE that investigates misconduct by agency personnel.

Now, McMahon will be called on to investigate BATFE agents who abuse their positions. Perhaps in “Washington D.C. logic” it makes sense to put a rogue agent in charge of investigating other rogue agents. To the rest of the country, it makes no sense at all.

Distortion in the Courts – Judges display little respect for Second Amendment rights

Posted on by Buckeye Firearms Association

by Jeff Knox

It can be argued that the only personal property specifically protected by the US Constitution is firearms. While the Fourth Amendment promises “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” and requires a sworn warrant “describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” it does specifically allow for such seizure if the “i’s” are properly dotted and the “t’s” correctly crossed.

Similarly the Fifth Amendment guarantees against a person being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” but again, it recognizes a process for such deprivation and taking. The Second Amendment contains no such provisions for circumvention.

While I would not argue that the Second Amendment precludes society from ever restricting arms in any circumstance – such as to inmates in prison or briefly while police sort out the good guys from the bad guys at an incident – I do believe that it places firearms in a very special and protected place under law; a place where any deprivation of the right should receive special scrutiny and careful consideration. But our judicial system seems to take the exact opposite view. In any legal issue firearms are typically the first thing taken away and the last thing returned – if they are ever returned at all.

A couple of recent cases renewed my concern about the attitude that the courts routinely exhibit toward guns.

An Open Letter To All Urban Residents – And Especially Jews

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by Rabbi Dovid Bendory, Rabbinic Director, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

The mainstream media is doing its best to belittle a dangerous trend in America today: the “flash mob” of “youths.” The term “flash mob” originally referred to groups of peaceful citizenry who gathered for what are best called “social experiments” – jovial sing-alongs and dance-alongs and other forms of harmless improvisational theater. I was personally caught up by several such “flash mobs” in New York City – and smiled at the entertaining street theater.

Times have changed rapidly, and ominously so.

In Wisconsin – home to JPFO’s office – “Witnesses’ accounts claim everything from dozens to hundreds of young black people beating white people as they left State Fair Thursday night.” (WTMJ News).

In Philadelphia, the “mayor talks tough to black teenagers after ‘flash mobs’ …attack people at random on the streets of the city’s tourist and fashionable shopping districts.” (Washington Times). The mayor has now imposed a curfew on the City.

“In Chicago on Memorial Day weekend, roving teens flashed gang signs, knocked cyclists off their bikes and harassed picnickers.” (decried the proposed lawWashington Times)

We’ve seen similar events in Peoria, IL; Atlanta, GA; Las Vegas, NV; and – close to home for me personally – South Orange, NJ. (Flash Mobs).

And while you won’t see it in the MSM, you can find plenty of blogs that highlight the racial undertones – and overtones – of these flash mobs. Here’s an account of a Peoria eye-witness who says the mob chanted “kill all the white people.” (See Blog).

As most decent people are watching the stock market gyrations and following our federal government’s mismanagement of both monetary and fiscal policy, our nation is entering an unpredictable phase. I’m sorry to say that, based on history, things are going to get worse. Just look at London, England, where four nights of rioting hooligans have resulted in the deployment of an extra 16,000 police officers in an attempt to stop the looting, vandalism, destruction, assaults, and robbery.

My response to “flash mobs?”

GET A GUN.

Click here to read the entire letter at JPFO.org.

Repeal False Gun Free School Zone Act

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by Jeff Knox

Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has introduced a bill (HR-2613) to repeal the federal Gun Free School Zone Act. While many in the general public and the gun prohibition community will balk and ask questions like, “What does anyone need with a gun at a school,” knowledgeable rights supporters are wondering why it has taken so long.

The Gun Free School Zone Act, or GFSZA for short, was originally passed by Congress back in 1990, but in 1995 the Supreme Court voided the law, ruling it (quite correctly) to be an unconstitutional overreach of federal power. Congress quickly passed a revised version of the act which included the stipulation that the firearm had, “moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce.” With this addition Congress supposedly provided constitutional authority for their actions and, while the Supreme Court has not revisited the issue, several Appeals Courts have upheld convictions under the new language.

The GFSZA is one of those feel-good laws that so often pass in the wake of a tragedy – the Stockton, California schoolyard shooting, in this case – which do nothing to address the problem, but which leave a wake of unintended consequences. The GFSZA did nothing to prevent the rash of school shootings that plagued the nation in the 1990s.

Does anyone honestly believe that the Columbine murderers were deterred in the slightest by the law against bringing guns within 1000 feet of a school? Could the police have somehow been magically aware of the illegal presence of the firearms and been able to interdict the weapons before the murderers had the opportunity to start their killing spree? Unlikely. But a gun owner pulled over for a traffic violation who is carrying a gun in the car in an otherwise lawful manner could be charged with a federal felony (5 years and $5,000) if he happens to be within the mythical Gun Free School Zone.

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