Lawmakers embrace ‘DoNothing’ sloganon gunreform
For almost 24 years, the legislature has failed to fix school funding. And the median income of Ohio households is 10% less than the national median. But there’s one thing the General Assembly does well: Pass pro-handgun bills.
A week before Christmas, as many legislators prepared to head home, Ohio’s House and Senate passed Senate Bill 175, a so-called “stand your ground” bill. And last week, GOP Gov. Mike DeWine,
who’s pleaded unsuccessfully for gun safety measures, signed it.
The House folded
“stand your ground” language into SB 175 by adopting an amendment sponsored by Rep. Kyle Koehler, a Springfield Republican, passed it 52-31, then volleyed it to the Senate, which approved it 18-11.
Koehler is a constructive legislator. With tenacity and courage, he won passage in 2018 of Ohio’s payday loan reform law, overcoming the relentless propayday-loan lobby.
His stand-your-ground amendment was drawn from a separate standyour-ground bill he sponsored. In committee testimony, he explained standyour-ground this way:
“[It] extends the rules described in the Castle Doctrine to any place a person is lawfully allowed to be. It does not change the fact that a person must … honestly believe that deadly force was necessary to prevent serious bodily harm or death.”
Ohio’s 2008 Castle Doctrine law, analysts reported, says someone is “presumed to have acted in self-defense … when using defensive force that [may] cause death” when defending his or her residence or vehicle against an unlawful intruder.
(Then-Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, signed the 2008 bill, calling it “common-sense legislation.”) Senate Bill 175 extends 2008’s Castle Doctrine law to any place that a person has a legal right to be. Among those testifying against “stand your ground” were the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police, the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence and the Catholic Conference of Ohio.
House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, D-Akron, called DeWine a coward for signing SB 175: She said stand-your-ground “has been proven to disproportionately harm Black people.” The Urban Institute found in 2013 “substantial evidence of racial disparities in justifiable homicide determinations … In addition … Stand Your Ground laws in two dozen states [appear] to worsen [that racial] disparity.”
Legislators have ignored gun-safety proposals DeWine made after 2019’s mass shooting in the Oregon district. DeWine said he’d promised when he ran to sign stand-your-ground legislation. So he did, “in the spirit of cooperation with the General Assembly … I look forward to working … to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and to protect the rights of citizens who follow the law.”
The stand-your-ground bill passed with fairly close House and Senate tallies. But attendance was spotty. Had DeWine vetoed the bill, it’s likely the Senate could have mustered the needed 20 override votes, and the House the needed 60, especially given the arrival last week of 17 new Republicans who don’t yet know the legislature is a swap-meet, not a seminar on big ideas.
When DeWine spoke at a vigil after the Oregon district shootings, some chanted, “Do something!” They didn’t know that, unless you make big campaign donations or are sweet on handguns, the General Assembly’s motto is, “Do nothing!”
Correction: Supreme Court Justice Sharon Kennedy, a Butler County Republican, won a new, term in November. Last week’s column stated Kennedy would be up for re-election in 2022.