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"The way we put it together, the fact that you had people on both sides of the issue — I would have thought something would have happened," said Kasich, who watched the bill package languish in legislative chambers run by his own party. "But the negative voices come in unison and they come strongly."
The Ohio experience is not unusual.
An Associated Press review of all firearms-related legislation passed this year, encompassing the first full state legislative sessions since the Las Vegas attack, shows a decidedly mixed record. Gun control bills did pass in a number of states, but the year was not the national game-changer that gun-control advocates had hoped it could be.
The most significant policy development, the review found, was the enactment of so-called "red flag laws" in eight states. Those laws allow police or relatives to seek court orders to seize guns from people who are showing signs of violence.
Five Republican governors signed those laws, which have been used to seize guns from hundreds of individuals already this year.
Democratic-controlled legislatures in states with already strict gun control laws, such as Illinois and New Jersey, made them tighter in the wake of the tragedies.
One policy change many thought would be non-controversial turned out to be a harder sell: banning bump stocks.
Lobbying by gun rights activists succeeded in blocking many states from enacting proposed bans, which they had feared would quickly spread nationwide after the Las Vegas shooting. Congress hasn't acted on them, either.
State Rep. Nickie Antonio, a Cleveland-area Democrat, said she could have told the governor it would fail. She said Republican lawmakers sound to her "like automatons" when the topic of gun control arises.
"They go to these automatic catchphrases that come right out of a pamphlet from either Buckeye Firearms or the NRA," she said. "That's what I think it's about. I do believe it's a case of follow the money."