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Newspaper Reporter Takes CHL Course PDF Print E-mail
Written by Jeff Garvas   
Sunday, 11 March 2007

A News Journal reporter recently took Ohio's Concealed Carry Training from the Hamilton Police Department and reported on her experience in the paper. Her article can be read on their website too: Reporter exercises First, Second Amendment rights

We've come to expect the gun-hating-reporter-takes-a-class-and-rants-about-it story, but we can't find many* flaws in Denise Wilson's professionalism and attention to details. Wilson didn't go to the class to say she attended and is now qualified to vilify gun owners and our choice to carry firearms.

She clearly took notes, learned the material, and admitted learning a lot about firearms that she thought she already knew from recreational shooting. Honesty in a news piece on firearms? You'd think it was April 1st.
I thought I knew a little about handguns, since I had been to a firing range with my husband several times to shoot in recent years. But I knew far less than I thought.

Some of the most important things I learned are that I should always treat every firearm as if it is loaded...

I also learned that Ohio law specifies that deadly force is only an option for self defense and defense of another; in other words, the use of deadly force should be a last resort.

Imagine that -- someone in the print news media who might just call it a license, probably won't refer to you as a gun 'toting' Neanderthal, and might just respect all of the hoops one has to go through in order to obtain a concealed handgun license in Ohio. In the end, she even strongly encouraged both gun owners and those who fear guns to take the concealed handgun course even if just to learn a little bit more about firearms.
Now I encourage adults who are afraid of guns or curious about them to sign up for the CCW course to learn as much as possible about gun safety in case you or your children ever have to come into contact with a weapon; I also recommend that gun enthusiasts take the course to learn how to carry a concealed handgun legally in Ohio.

Wilson goes even further, letting on that she truly understands the foundation of self-defense advocacy. The last sentence of her article is basically the reason so many of us have chosen to carry a firearm, and proves that this was anything but a puff piece for her editors:
Besides, you're responsible for your own safety.
We constantly tell you to contact the news media when they do something wrong. Let Ms. Wilson know just how much we approve -- no make that greatly appreciate her completely unbiased and fact-based story. It's a rarity in today's super hyped emotion based scare them to death for top fold headlines mentality.

* We did notice that Ms. Wilson's story states that HB12 created the obligation to retreat when possible for deadly force to be justified, and while this is not where Ohio's retreat requirement exactly came from, she pretty much got the rest of it right and the flaw is just a technicality.