I hammered this out really fast, so forgive me if it's not very polished.
2/23/2014 Visit to Ohio Statehouse
Fresh from the capitol, I wanted to put a few thoughts down on paper, so to speak. First, it was a privilege to work with my fellow OFCC’ers at the capitol today, most of whom I met for the first time. Second, I have to say I rather enjoyed myself more than I expected, even with the two visits to offices of senators considered unfriendly to 2nd amendment issues. I’ll start with the background for our activities today, and yes, it will be repetitive, but I feel it important to set the stage.
We went to discuss HB 203. We weren’t addressing any of the other bills in the assembly. HB 203 is now in the Senate Civil Justice Committee, but no hearings on it have yet been scheduled. Our meetings today were mainly to dispel some misinformation and incorrect rumors about the bill, while also hopefully helping to create some momentum toward getting the bill moving again.
We went in with one major point that we wanted to make sure to emphasize, and that was the incorrect reporting that HB 203 was a ‘stand your ground’ or ‘make my day’ bill. The media has repeatedly used those phrases when referring to the bill, as have some of the organizations opposed to it. Comparisons to the Florida ‘stand your ground’ law and the Trayvon Martin shooting have been repeatedly made in an attempt to shift the debate over to emotion rather than logic. Title 46, Chapter 782 of the Florida Statutes, 782.02 defines what justifies the use of deadly force in Florida.
Justifiable use of deadly force.—The use of deadly force is justifiable when a person is resisting any attempt to murder such person or to commit any felony upon him or her or upon or in any dwelling house in which such person shall be.
Note that there is no duty to retreat, no requirement to believe you are in fear of your life or grave bodily injury, and there is no mention that you must not have instigated or escalated the situation that led to violence. All three of those things are now required in Ohio law in order to justifiably use deadly force in self-defense. HB 203 proposes that we remove only one of them, the duty to retreat. That in no way makes Ohio a ‘stand your ground’ state, and it in no way makes Ohio equivalent to Florida. Only the commission of a felony is required in Florida, and the felony doesn’t even have to be committed against a person. It can be committed against property too, and still trigger the lawful use of deadly force. That isn’t even remotely what HB 203 would enact.
Another item of note I’d like to mention here is the misconceptions about Florida and the Zimmerman/Martin case in general. It wasn’t the focus of our visits today, but it did get brought up in two of the office visits that I attended that the Florida ‘stand your ground’ law wasn’t even used in the George Zimmerman case. It wasn’t applicable. In both cases the person we were meeting with was surprised to hear that fact. They were completely equating ‘stand your ground’ to George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. This could probably best be described as the political version of magician’s sleight of hand.
That was the main point going in, and I think we did a pretty good job of conveying it. In fact, I think the biggest success we had with that point was with those considered to not be the best friends of the 2nd amendment. Let’s face it. We already knew who our friends were going in, and they didn’t really need any convincing. All we were doing with them was providing them with the proper ammunition and contacts when the time comes for them to make the same arguments themselves down the road. So the best opportunity for “victories” today would only rest with those who were not already on our side.
As I said earlier, I participated in two meetings with ‘the other side’ today, and I have to say they went much better than I expected. I won’t go so far as to say we have two more votes in our pockets, but we did succeed in raising eyebrows with some facts they weren’t aware of, and they were happy to know them. The conversation was definitely two way and open minded. Body language that was decidedly negative at the beginning of the meeting was far less so by the end. In one case we were even helped by circumstances. The aide we were speaking with was an Eagle Scout who had taught the marksmanship merit badge. (I should note that with only one exception, we spoke with aides today rather than with the senators themselves)
We did get a little insight into other aspects of the battle over this bill. One aide told us that the Chiefs of Police are basically irrelevant because to them the only good gun is a gun in the hands of a cop. The FOP seems to be the biggest player on the other side right now. They were there yesterday, so we got the benefit of hearing some of what they said and seeing some of what was circulated. Much of this has already been seen with their testimony in the House, but I’ll go over it here anyway. They have a detailed point by point analysis, but their objections are mainly tied to a few key areas.
‘TERRY STOPS’
“House Bill (HB) 203, while commonly referred to the stand your ground bill, contains a number of provisions objectionable to the FOP. The bill forbids law enforcement from conducting a Terry stop of any armed individual for the offenses of disorderly or inducing panic. Officers will no longer to be able to proactively engage an individual who is armed until after the crime.”
Now, before you ask, yes, they actually said that. “The bill forbids law enforcement from conducting a Terry stop of any armed individual for the offenses of disorderly or inducing panic.” HB 203 says nothing of the sort. It adds the following paragraph to both the ORCs for disorderly conduct and inducing panic:
The exercise of a constitutional or statutory right is not, in itself, a violation of this section and does not constitute reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity.
Note that it doesn’t even mention firearms. There’s absolutely nothing there that says they can’t stop anyone “for the offenses of disorderly or inducing panic”, armed or otherwise. All it says is that if you aren’t breaking the law, they can’t treat you as if you are. Technically they can’t legally do that already, but we all know that some of them do as a harassment technique. And stopping someone who is open carrying a firearm in complete compliance with the law is not a Terry stop.
“Officers will no longer to be able to proactively engage an individual who is armed until after the crime.” In other words, they can’t hassle a law abiding citizen unless he breaks the law. And they have a problem with that? This is right out of that movie, Minority Report. Now they think they can predict our guilt before we commit a crime, and they want the right to stop us for crimes we haven’t yet committed. Except in this case, there’s no evidence we’re about to commit those crimes. You really have to wonder if these people go back and read what they just wrote before they release it to someone else. There’s some debate as to whether or not these objections by the FOP are just misunderstanding or are deliberate misinformation. Given the grammatical errors and downright comedic content, I lean toward complete misunderstanding.
AUTOMATIC RECIPROCITY
The FOP opposes the provisions in HB 203 that have the Ohio attorney general extend recognition of concealed carry licenses from states that recognize Ohio concealed carry licenses, deleting the current requirement that those other states must have license requirements similar to the requirements we have to obtain a concealed carry license in Ohio.
The bill creates an automatic reciprocity scheme that allows those from states who pass a law recognizing an Ohio CCW permit to be allowed to carry concealed in Ohio. The Ohio attorney general would no longer be required to enter into an agreement and ensure that a state substantially meets Ohio’s standards. This includes states like Indiana who have no training requirement.
And???? They don’t state any reason why this is a problem. Suppose Indiana required training. Would they teach Ohio concealed carry laws? Then what difference would the training make?
Some made much of training for safety reasons when HB 203 went through the house. While there are certainly points to be made with such an argument, you can’t mandate training to carry a gun. Carrying a gun is a constitutionally protected right, guaranteed at both the federal and state levels. No license is required to carry a gun openly in Ohio and no training is required for it. No training is required to exercise your freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. Why would it be required to exercise your right to bear arms? That right is just as inalienable as the others. The difference lies in when the gun goes from open to concealed, and that changes it from a generally unregulated to a regulated state. It makes it subject to Ohio concealed carry laws. Those laws are the only thing that have changed. If there were any change in training to be mandated, it would necessarily be on Ohio concealed carry laws. It wouldn’t be training on carrying or handling a firearm, because you were already doing that. All of this does beg one question though. If these people are safely carrying a gun in their home state with less training than Ohio requires, what would magically make them more dangerous the instant they step over the Ohio state line?
Since we’ve seen some of it before, this could be another control issue with the FOP. This is from last November when HB 203 was going through the House:
Ironically, the proposed reciprocity changes in HB 203 ceded the rights of this great state and grants them to others. Indianans will be determining who carries a firearm in Ohio.
Were this really a problem, we wouldn’t recognize driver’s licenses from other states without first confirming they meet the ‘Ohio standard’.
TRAINING HOURS
The FOP opposes reducing the minimum training time for obtaining a license from 12 hours to 4 hours.
HB 203 reduces the training hours from 12 to four. Last legislative session the general assembly eliminated the training requirement for second and subsequent renewal. Now, under HB 203 a licensee would only get four training hours for the lifetime of the license. These four hours do not include range time.
I’ll address the last comment first. The range and live fire requirements now contained in 2923.125(G)(1)(b) would still be retained as in (G)(1)(e) if HB 203 is passed as is, so I have no idea why FOP thinks the range requirement would disappear.
Other than the confusion over ‘stand your ground’, the minimum training hours was the biggest topic of discussion today. The team I was on opened the discussion with SYG, and training hours was by far the most common response we got when we asked if there were any other concerns. My impression is that it’s unlikely that 4 hours will be the final number. My guess is that we’ll end up with 6 or 8. We seemed to get agreement that 12 hours wasn’t really necessary anymore due, at least in part, to the reduced complexity in Ohio’s concealed carry laws since they were originally instituted. Even the two aides from ‘the other side’ seemed to accept that argument.
EXPUNGED RECORDS
The FOP says that HB 203 makes changes to records expungement that creates a public safety risk.
The bill allows those who have committed certain disqualifying offenses a license if their record has been expunged. Non-residents can become an Ohio license holder under the bill. Creating a scenario making it very difficult for a sheriff to suspend or revoke this out of state holder’s license if a disqualifying offense occurred in another state.
Let’s make one thing perfectly clear here. Sheriffs do not decide what disqualifying offenses are. The legislature decides what those offenses are and they delineate those offenses in the Ohio Revised Code. More specifically, they spell it out in ORC 2923.125 and ORC 2923.1213. Those two ORCs contain the rules for dealing with expungement, and they always have. So there is no difficulty that Sheriffs have to deal with when it comes to suspending or revoking a concealed carry license, for a resident or a non-resident. It’s written there in black and white. The only difficulty there could possibly be is if any change offended their political sensibility, but that’s irrelevant.
HB 203 would make only two changes that would deal with expungement, one each in 2923.125 and 2923.1213. You may recognize 2923.125 as the standard statute for licensing requirements in Ohio. 2923.1213 is basically the same type of statute for the temporary emergency concealed carry license requirements. They are in many respects identical, and that’s true when it comes to record expungement. The problem the FOP has here really isn’t a problem at all. Either they didn’t read the bill very well or they’re trying to invent a controversy that doesn’t exist. HB 203 makes no changes whatsoever to records expungement. It adds criteria for non-resident concealed carry licenses to both 2923.125 and 2923.1213, and the criteria duplicates for the most part what is already the requirement for Ohio residents. The records expungement requirements that HB 203 would add for non-residents are 100 percent identical to those that already exist in the ORC for residents of Ohio. There would be no difference whatsoever. This is an argument in search of a problem.
And just for the record, expunged records are
supposed to be difficult to access. That’s the entire purpose of expungement.
So obviously we haven’t learned anything new about the bill. We have learned that some members in the Senate have been victims of the media hype and disinformation, but that’s really no surprise. I think we made some very good progress today as far as education goes. I hope the people we contacted make good use of the contact information we gave them so we can take those educational opportunities even further. From a personal standpoint (not official OFCC), I think HB 203 will pass, but in what form I can’t say. I don’t think it will pass as currently written. I’m fairly certain the training time of 4 hours won’t stay that low. As for the rest of it I can’t really say. They aren’t going to clue us in on all the back room politics and negotiations, at least not at this point anyway, so it’s still too early to even make a reasonable guess I think. But all in all I think the day went well.
This post is available as a pdf file at:
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