| Big City Newspaper Editors Complain About OFCC Win |
|
|
|
| Written by Daniel White | |
| Friday, 26 September 2008 | |
|
The editors of The Plain Dealer and the Toledo Blade are throwing virtual temper tantrums this morning over OFCC's win in Ohioans For Concealed Carry v. the City of Clyde in the Ohio Supreme Court. According to the Blade, we're all a bunch of "gun-rights zealots" who won't let cities "safeguard their communities" by banning guns in parks or anywhere else they choose. They can't wrap their heads around the fact that the Ohio legislature moved to make gun laws uniform so that we could safeguard ourselves. Comparing banning the Constitutional right to protect yourself (The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security - Article 1, Section 4) to rules about park hours and dogs, as the Plain Dealer did, shows their lack of understanding of the concept of Rights. They might as well argue that since the park can require you to pick up after your dog they can also ban Muslim women from wearing a Burqa. The primary complaint by the opposition is that private property owners can ban guns while public property "owners" cannot. I already debunked that concept in a previous article. Public property and private property are completely different animals. A private property owner can do a lot of things that a public property "owner" cannot. For example, if a convenience story owner doesn't like you, they can tell you you're not allowed to come into the store anymore. If a mayor doesn't like you, they can't tell you you're not allowed to come to City Council meetings anymore, or that you can't use a city park, or that you're not allowed to walk down the sidewalk. That's not taking "a whack at common sense", it is applying common sense. For all the crying they're doing about not being able to ban guns in the park, where is the benefit? You see articles all the time about people getting attacked, mugged, raped, and murdered in parks. How is putting a sign up going to stop that from happening? It isn't, of course. And the scare tactics claiming that CHL holders are going to start shooting at soccer matches are no different that the mad ravings when concealed carry passed in Ohio and they claimed there would be blood running in the streets due to shootouts over fender-benders and that Ohio would become the "wild west." Come back down to Earth, folks. Legal gun owners aren't the problem. Criminals are. The Plain Dealer even admits it. Ohio's concealed-carry law has had none of the deleterious effects that some opponents feared. But that shouldn't stop the next legislature from reversing this inane provision and freeing local governments to make rules they think make sense on public property. So, even though it's true that the anti's are wrong about their predictions, that shouldn't stop them from trying to get more restrictions passed? Now, that's absurd. The Plain Dealer is right about one thing, "Guns-rights groups no doubt will see this as a green light to attack local laws regarding assault-style weapons and trigger locks." Just as we're forced to obey laws we don't like, these cities have now been told that they're not above the law and they will have to obey laws they don't like. The Blade hinted that Toledo will not be repealing their ban. We'll see about that. |