Can’t help your constituents? Be bullish on guns

Knowing that local elected officials stand guard on Ohio’s watchtowers helps voters sleep better. So, for example, commissioners in more than 20 counties, mainly but not just rural counties, have vowed to uphold the Second Amendment.

You know about the Second Amendment, yes? It’s the promise our Founding Fathers made to us 233 years ago: That every American has a Heaven-sent right to brandish a loaded gun.

The commissioners’ resolutions have no legal effect. Commissioners already swore to uphold the Constitution when they took office.

The timing is interesting, though. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, of Greene County’s Cedarville, wants the General Assembly to pass his STRONG Ohio plan. He hopes it will reduce gun violence. Senate Bill 221, sponsored by Sen. Matt Dolan, a Chagrin Falls Republican, incorporates DeWine’s proposals. Co-sponsors are Republican Sens. Peggy Lehner, of Kettering, and Frank Hoagland, of Jefferson County’s Adena.

Whatever commissioners’ motives, passing these resolutions can generate good public relations for them and for a group promoting these declarations of Second Amendment support, Ohio Stands Up (OSU). A headline in a county-seat weekly newspaper can count for a lot.

Still, just because a voter asks officials to do something doesn’t mean they should. Besides, gun confiscation is beyond unlikely. It’s impossible.

Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Democrat then running for president, said last year that “there are 390 million guns out on the streets of a country of 329 million people.” PolitiFact, the Poynter Institute’s fact-checking program, reviewed O’Rourke’s statement: “The latest study of civilian-owned firearms in the United States supports (O’Rourke’s) statement. We rate this claim True.”

That means, on a pro rata basis, there may well be 14 million guns circulating among Ohio’s 11.7 million residents. No government or official is capable of locating and confiscating that many firearms. But lots of people collect dues or win votes by pretending that gun confiscation is not just feasible, but likely. Maybe when the Martians land and take over, they could pull that off. No earthling ever could.

In most of the Ohio counties whose commissioners have adopted rahrah pro-gun resolutions, poverty and drug abuse are bigger problems than guns and ammo.

Of the 24 counties whose commissioners OSU says have vowed devotion to the Second Amendment, just two are north of U.S. 224: Huron (Norwalk) and Seneca (Tiffin). Among the other counties, 16 are in Appalachian Ohio.

In 15 of those 16 Appalachian counties, median household income is lower than statewide. The exception: suburban Cincinnati’s Clermont County (Batavia). Its median household income is $64,822. That’s 19 percent greater than statewide.

In the six remaining counties whose commissioners may daydream about marching as patriots in Archibald Willard’s “Spirit of ’76” painting, median household incomes are less than Ohio’s statewide median in two – Marion and Clinton (Wilmington). Median household incomes are higher than statewide in four others: Mid-Ohio’s Knox (Mount Vernon), Morrow (Mount Gilead) and Pickaway (Circleville) counties, and in Preble County.

In 2018, the latest year available, state Health Department data show that in the 24 counties whose commissioners have passed Second Amendment resolutions, 433 men and women died due to unintentional drug overdoses; 78 of those deaths occurred in Clermont County.

Given the horse-andbuggy governments in many counties, it may be hard to fault the inaction of local officials over flat or declining incomes and accidental drug deaths. Instead, Second Amendment grandstands, a no-cost option, pop up on agendas.

Yet amid the words proclaimed in some county seats about the Second Amendment, there’s another word someone down at the courthouse needs to remember: “Priorities.”

In most of the Ohio counties whose commissioners have adopted rahrah pro-gun resolutions, poverty and drug abuse are bigger problems than guns and ammo.

Thomas Suddes is an expert on Ohio politics who has written for 35 years. Send email to tsuddes@gmail. com.