Mr. Das and I recently started scouting out for our first house, and I took it upon myself today to peruse the local ordinances of the potential cities/towns we were looking at. Stow, in particular, caught my eye, as they apparently require any transaction of firearms to be documented and that a copy of that documentation should be sent to the police chief or safety officer of the municipality/county where the transaction happened. Wording found below:
This is entirely separate from what they say about licensed dealers/manufacturers, so I can only assume that they intend this to apply to private sales. And I also assume I'm right in believing they can't require that documentation be sent to anyone at all. Please let me know if I misunderstand this.549.06 UNLAWFUL TRANSACTIONS IN WEAPONS.
(a) No person shall:
(1) Manufacture, possess for sale, sell or furnish to any person other than a law enforcement agency for authorized use in police work, any brass knuckles, cestus, billy, blackjack, sandbag, switchblade knife, springblade knife, gravity knife or similar weapon;
(2) When transferring any dangerous ordnance to another, negligently fail to require the transferee to exhibit such identification, license or permit showing him to be authorized to acquire dangerous ordnance pursuant to Ohio R.C. 2923.17, or negligently fail to take a complete record of the transaction and forthwith forward a copy of such record to the sheriff of the county or safety director or police chief of the municipality where the transaction takes place;
(3) Knowingly fail to report to law enforcement authorities forthwith the loss or theft of any firearm or dangerous ordnance in such person's possession or under his control.
(b) Whoever violates this section is guilty of unlawful transactions in weapons. Violation of subsections (a)(1) or (2) hereof is a misdemeanor of the second degree. Violation of subsection (a)(3) hereof is a misdemeanor of the fourth degree. (ORC 2923.20)
I already contacted their law director to ask, essentially, if the ordinances I'm finding online are up-to-date, as there were several other ones I wanted clarified as well before we continue our house-hunting in that locale. He has not written back yet. The rest of their ordinances look like they were copied straight from the ORC, and as far as I can see, they did update the section on carry in a motor vehicle for the little bits that were changed awhile ago, so I rather think this is simply something that got skipped over. I'm making OFCC aware of this however, in case someone else would like to call them or send a letter. As I said, I'm house-hunting there and have several things to discuss in their legal code, so I didn't want to risk that message being lost in the shuffle, so to speak. I thought it might be better to hear from someone with a more pointed mission, and possibly from someone who already lives there, in case it ended up being more of a problem than i think it is.