| Cincinnati Wants Cities to Decide Gun Control Issues |
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| Written by Jeff Garvas | |
| Thursday, 27 October 2005 | |
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The City of Cincinnati apparently didn't learn much when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Ohioans have a fundamental individual right to carry firearms in the State of Ohio. (Klein v. Leis, in which OFCC was a co-plaintiff) According to an Associated Press story in most major newspapers Thursday morning: Canton Repository & Dayton Daily News, so far... Cincinnati is seeking to re-establish an ordinance prohibiting semiautomatic weapons that have a magazine capacity of more than 10 rounds. State law sets a limit of 31 rounds.This case, which the City lost in both the Hamilton County courts and the First District Court of Appeals where the Klein case was fought, draws significant resemblance to the primary argument in OFCC's case against the City of Clyde. (Click 'READ MORE' to continue) The premise of the primary argument in Clyde is that a city can not take away what the State of Ohio has in fact "given" through a license structure. From the AP story: [Cincinnati's attorney] acknowledged it would not be permissible for a city to allow a larger magazine than specified by state law. But he contended that law did not intend to legalize any gun that holds fewer than 31 rounds.Here is where we believe Cincinnati's attorney has lost all concept of law. Criminal laws, by their very nature, typically prohibit activities deemed criminal. The lack of a law prohibiting an activity is basically "implied consent". In other words, if Ohio law says it is illegal to have a magazine that holds in excess of 31 cartridges, can you have a magazine that holds 30? Of course. Cincinnati's attorney wants to have his cake and eat it too. In his world magazines in excess of thirty rounds would be illegal, and so would magazines of eleven or twenty-one rounds. What the City doesn't point out is how the difference between a ten round magazine and a factory high capacity magazine is going to impact their "crime" problem -- where criminals misuse firearms they shouldn't have in the first place, let alone a magazine that holds just one round of ammunition. Cincinnati should stop arguing over the number of rounds that can be carried and focus on getting guns out of the hands of criminals who misuse them. Luckily for gun owners, common sense prevailed in the court: "Is not that, by implication, what the law says?" asked Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton.Ironically, lawyers for the City of Cincinnati once argued that should the Hamilton County Court granted a temporary injunction that "threw out" the concealed carry prohibitions in 2000, the city would become a "patchwork" of local gun laws, and law enforcement wouldn't know where they could or could not arrest for carrying concealed. On Wednesday, they specifically asked the Ohio Supreme Court to give them the authority to do what they specifically asked lower courts to deny when the tables were turned and state gun laws were going to be temporarily thrown out in Hamilton County. Home Rule Rears Its Ugly Head: Justice Alice Robie Resnick said Ohio's "Home Rule" law might provide the answer.Yet again it boils down to when the home rule amendment to the Ohio Constitution allows a local government to supersede and conflict with state law. The need for properly written statewide pre-emption, which could withstand constitutional scrutiny, couldn't be greater than it is today. |