One would think that nothing happened behind the scenes of this story in Sunday's Youngstown Vindicator: Campbell considers lifting ban on gun sales.

Earlier this year the NRA-ILA sent out an alert advising Ohioans that the small city of Campbell Ohio, near Youngstown, was going to ban the sale of firearms city wide.  We heard about it too and couldn't believe a city in Ohio still thought it could get away with this.   Discussion on our forums began and OFCC sent off a polite letter asking for a copy of the proposed ordinance.  What we learned is that the council had voted to adopt emergency legislation that created a city issued license and prohibited certain sales of firearms.

All of these issues were in direct violation of Ohio Revised Code 9.68.   Days after receiving our letter and explanation of the laws that they may have violated the city sent us back what they proposed as an amendment to fix the law.  It exempted residential sales and continued to prohibit commercial sales city wide.

We've since been told that the letters we were sending to the city were not shared with the council, but instead secretly held by the proponents of the legislation.  In this small town the police chief wants to ban guns, and his wife supposedly works for the Mayor.   So when we wrote the Mayor, she received the letter and responded to us.   Her phone call was nearly hysterical fear of guns existing in a safe.  We were told that a resident wanted to get his FFL and store firearms in a safe in his house, but it was her opinion that he would be killed over this because of the high crime in their community.  The City contacted the BATFE, which advised them that they had no objections to their ordinance, so they proceeded.

As if to make this story even harder to believe, we've been told that the city was advised by an attorney that "some gun case in Chicago" was going to change everything for them. Our second letter had already been sent and we couldn't point out how unreasonable this argument was, but what will city council do?

Our second letter was accidentally discovered withing the city administration and leaked to the council the day before the vote on the amended legislation.  We've been told that when the letter was used in council proponents forced the council into executive session.  To this day the Mayor's office has ignored our second letter, and our legal department has had little success in discussing the issue with the city's law director.   Until Sunday it wasn't clear if the City was going to even acknowledge our legal argument, despite attorneys for Ohioans For Concealed Carry attempting to reach out to their law director.  Then the Youngstown Vindicator published the above story.

The City of Campbell admits in this story that their intent is "to keep gun shops out of the city", and although a city can enact zoning regulations that limit where gun related businesses operate they may not pass any ordinance or zoning law that creates a "de facto ban" on the lawful transaction of firearms sales.   Sadly, the City of Campbell and it's police chief feel that lawful firearms businesses would somehow detrimentally impact what they admit to already having:  a horrible lack of control over criminal activity in their own backyard.

What they should be doing is encouraging their residents to seek proper training and become lawfully armed citizens, instead of going out of their way to step on their rights.  What they shouldn't be doing is prohibiting their very own residents from opening lawful businesses and contributing to the local economy, either.