Do Ohio Lawmakers Know What They Are Doing?
By Ellen Wickham

So how have you kept busy this summer?

The first sunny day of my summer vacation was spent downtown in Columbus,
Ohio at the state capitol building watching our legislative process at
work. When I left the Senate viewing area, I took with me a plethora of
mixed up, muddled up feelings.

As most of Ohio is aware by now, Substitute HB 12, a concealed carry bill
from the Ohio House that Senators rewrote, has now passed. I am extremely
disappointed and very concerned about this bill. While there are many
things wrong with it — mandatory fingerprinting for one — there is one
specific issue that concerns me most. As the substitute bill is written
at this time and if it is passed as written, it will be illegal to
possess a firearm on your person in a vehicle that is transporting
children who are under age 18.

There were many things wrong with the original House legislation. But
now, the Senate versionl states that firearms must be in a locked
container in any vehicle in which children are riding. Sidebar: If you
go by Senator Robert Hagan?s definition of “children,” that would include
those to age 25! But I digress…

Does the Ohio Senate know what it is doing? For that matter, does anyone
in the Ohio General Assembly know what they are doing if they pass these
provisions into law? Specifically, I firmly believe this part of the
bill will effectively raise the mortality rate of mothers and children in
Ohio. Far fetched you say? Paranoid too? Maybe an over reactive female?
How about hysterical?

I am none of these. I am an educator. And I am a woman with children
who knows that the criminal is a lazy, opportunistic *#&%@! that seeks
out those who are most vulnerable.

Under this legislation, which Governor Taft has gleefully announced he
would sign, who will be most vulnerable? The very ones that have been
denied the right by the law to protect herself and her children just
because she is driving a car. In passing this bill, the Senators of Ohio
might as well have put bulls-eye targets on the vehicles of mothers
driving their daughters to ballet practice, or their sons to soccer
games. Because we are the ones that will be the targets of those lazy
opportunistic *#&%@! criminals.

Parents have a responsibility and a right to protect their children.
Women and men who believe in this responsibility will not support this
bill as written. They won’t support lawmakers who advocate this insane
compromise. And I, for one, am not willing to wear a bulls-eye put on my
car put by the Ohio General Assembly and the governor.

Senator Lynn Wachtmann said it best, ?This is bad law. And no law is
better than bad law?.

– Ellen Wickham is women’s issues chair for the Peoples Rights
Organization. Her periodic columns appear in the PROponent, the
newsletter received by PRO members.