Ohio Sheriff Calls For Guns In All Schools

Written by Jeff Garvas

Friday, 20 April 2007

According to published news reports Butler County Ohio Sheriff Richard Jones is calling on the Ohio Legislature to mandate armed personnel in every Ohio school. We're not talking about college campuses, we're talking about every imaginable school including grade schools, private schools, and parochial schools. Kudos to Sheriff Jones for going out on a limb and making such a controversial demand as an elected Sheriff. Forward thinking members of school boards have been shamed into resignation for making such a controversial statement, let alone a call to pass it into law! In a state where School Funding is a constitutional hot potato that has been thrown back and forth between the Ohio Supreme Court and the Ohio Legislature the chances of funding such a mandate are slim to none. The most cost effective and easily implemented solution is to pass legislation, possibly in the form of an emergency, that revokes every restriction on law abiding citizens licensed to carry a firearm from entering these facilities. Today adults twenty-one years and older including older students, faculty, and staff at major universities are prohibited from taking a firearm past the parking lot. Those who live on campus can't have firearms in most cases. As an adult trained extensively in armed self-defense I am prohibited from having my firearm at my job, at most restaurants, and when picking up my child from day-care for no reason other than to appease irrational fear. Occasionally I walk past an openly armed father at my daughter's day-care simply because he's a police officer. There is no logic in this scenario. Sheriff Jones is on the right track and his scope of attack proves he sees the bigger picture. This isn't about universities, its about everywhere that guns don't exist. Ohio's lawmakers need to take a hard look at all of the places licensed people are prohibited from carrying a concealed firearm and begin aggressive restriction removal before another Virginia Tech or CWRU shooting takes place in Ohio. Lets mandate that licensees can't be prohibited, period, in government buildings, rest stop bathrooms, restaurants, day-care facilities and literally every educational establishment in Ohio and what Sheriff Jones wants to accomplish will happen at no cost to taxpayers, or we can sit idle as people call his idea crazy and more innocent people are killed randomly.