CLEVELAND, OH - April 21, 2015 - Today Ohioans For Concealed Carry, joined by a member of the organization and resident of Cleveland, filed a taxpayer action against the City of Cleveland challenging illegal gun control legislation City Council adopted April 20th. Further, the organization is seeking Mandamus to compel the city to provide public records requests related to Cleveland gun buy-back events that have been ignored and/or denied for more than five years.
In 2007 The Ohio Legislature adopted Ohio Revised Code 9.68, a statewide comprehensive approach to uniformly standardizing firearms laws across the state of Ohio. One year later the Ohio Supreme Court decided in Ohioans For Concealed Carry v. City of Clyde that the statute was a general law and prevailed in a home rule challenge.
In 2010, the City of Cleveland challenged R.C. 9.68 again in Cleveland v. State and the court again upheld the law stating, "R.C. 9.68 is a general law that displaced municipal firearm ordinances and does not unconstitutionally infringe on municipal home rule authority"
Five years later and despite repeatedly being reminded of this court ruling the City has knowingly violated state law fully aware of the inevitable repeal of these laws by a competent court.
Urban crime - a complex problem that isn't disappearing anytime soon - causes politicians to appear chronically ineffective. That's not good politics. So administrations like Frank Jackson's divert voters' attention to a decoy issue they claim is the "real problem," and on which they can seem up to the task:
"The fascination with handguns, not just in the city, but in the country, has to stop," said Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams at the scene of a recent tragedy in which a child was killed when a youngster found a firearm presumably belonging to the parent.
"We need to take a long look at what we're doing on the state, local and national level to keep these guns out of our communities," said Williams. (Emphasis added)
If you can't control criminals' behavior - the real cause of all crime - blame all of the guns including those in the hands and homes of average law-abiding citizens.
Sadly, the City of Cleveland's proposed ordinances do absolutely nothing to prevent tragedy or violence. The only people who comply with gun control are the very people the City of Cleveland says they strive to protect.
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