Cities get ready to fight gun law

The cities say the state law is a violation of their constitutional right to home rule.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- As gun-rights groups lauded a new law passed last week lifting most local restrictions on carrying firearms, Ohio's big cities were contemplating joining forces to stop it.
In a rare confrontation with lawmakers, Gov. Bob Taft vetoed a bill that wiped out half a dozen assault-weapons bans across the state and dozens of other local gun laws -- but the Legislature overrode the veto soundly, the first time it had done so since 1977.
Jeff Garvas, who represents Ohioans for Concealed Carry, said gun-rights advocates had been boggled by how to comply with an earlier law that allowed gun owners to carry handguns in holsters, purses and pockets -- but didn't apply in municipalities where local restrictions had been passed.
"A collective sigh of relief went across the state of Ohio when pre-emption passed," Garvas said. "As clich & eacute; as it sounds, it's what happened. There are a couple different cases we're involved in where people are hung up on misdemeanor charges because they were trying to comply with Ohio's concealed-carry law."
But Ohio's cities were not happy with the state overriding their right to enact gun protections -- and most immediately vowed to take the state to court on the basis that that the state law violates their constitutional right to home rule.
"It's not only our assault-weapon ban that would be impacted," said Maureen Harper, a spokeswoman for Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson. "We have a law that prohibits minors from possessing firearms. We have a law that holds adults accountable if a child is in possession of a firearm. Those are three that would definitely be affected by this."
Supported the veto
The Ohio Municipal League, which represents cities and backed Taft's veto, said the new law even strips cities of rights that private-property owners would have to, say, regulate gun activity at parks and playgrounds.
"This double standard just does not make good sense and certainly is not fair," executive director Susan Cave wrote in her protest of the bill.
Harper said Cleveland and the other cities with bans -- including Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo and the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights -- are talking about coordinating their efforts once the law goes into effect.
The Ohio Supreme Court recently upheld Cincinnati's assault-weapons ban, which had been suspended for years as litigation proceeded. The cities' hope this time would be that a judge allows cities to continue to enforce their gun laws while the legal issues are argued.
Garvas said such a scenario is what gun-rights groups fear.
"Any gun owner in Ohio who pays attention to the issues will tell you that pre-emption was the golden egg in this bill," he said. "It's something that we wanted, something the NRA wanted. It's going to solve a lot of things."
NRA's intention
The National Rifle Association, in fact, made public its intention to wield its considerable political might in Ohio specifically to see local gun laws pre-empted by a Republican-led Legislature more friendly to its cause than the Democrat-run cities.
Such an irritation was the issue that NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre laid down the gauntlet personally during an appearance in Columbus -- shortly after the city passed its assault-weapons ban -- at which he pulled the group's lucrative convention from the city.
Since the Columbus ban passed last summer, the NRA has pumped more than 16,000 into legislative campaigns -- most of it flowing to Senate and House leaders. The group also gave 1,000 to incoming Attorney General Marc Dann, a Liberty Democrat.
Toby Hoover, executive director of Ohioans Against Gun Violence, said there is a fundamental disconnect between Ohio's suburban-rural areas and its urban areas on the issue -- with the former dominating policy made at the Statehouse.
"More and more, I'm reminded how it is the rural versus the urban," she said. "They've never lived there [in the city], never had a killing. Their communities are filled with people who have all hunted all their lives, and they don't relate to what's happening in the big cities."
While proponents and opponents vie for victory, the state is proceeding with its education campaign on how the law is supposed to operate 90 days from enactment.
But Bob Beasley, a spokesman for Attorney General Jim Petro, said the focus is on changes to the existing state law, such as the changes to gun owners' ability to carry in cars.
It will be up to cities to figure out for themselves how the bill affects them, he said.
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