Ohioans For Concealed Carry has learned that a HB12 Conference Committee meeting has been scheduled for this afternoon. With recent news about Ohio's skyrocketing crime rate, the time for delay and obstruction on this crime deterrent bill has obviously passed. Ohio's defenseless citizens deserve action on this bill.

House, Senate, discuss weapons compromise with Taft

The Associated Press
12/9/2003, 7:18 p.m. ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Reporters would be allowed access to limited public records on a name-by-name basis under a House and Senate compromise on a bill allowing Ohioans to carry concealed weapons.

In addition, people carrying concealed weapons would be allowed to keep the weapon in a holster when they get into a car, House Speaker Larry Householder said Tuesday.

An earlier proposal would have required them to remove the gun from a holster and place it in a locked box or glove compartment.

"The safest place is in a holster, on someone," Householder said. "You're telling someone who has a gun holstered to get into their automobile, take the gun out of the holster, fumble around, get it in a locked box ... This is the problem, the handling of the gun in the car."

Gov. Bob Taft's insistence that the names of permit holders be public stalled recent negotiations over the bill.

House and Senate lawmakers are discussing a compromise on a concealed weapons bill to try to pass legislation before year's end. A joint committee trying to work out differences over the bill scheduled a tentative vote Wednesday.

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Published immediately prior to the Bexley 'Defense' Walk outside the Governor's Mansion, this story hasn't even begun to be dated.

November 27, 2003
Columbus Alive

OK, so Republican leaders are on top of preemptively striking down same-sex marriage and promoting an anti-abortion agenda (separation of church and state be damned). But on other issues that are important to conservative Ohioans, they’re failing miserably.

The most obvious is taxes, on which “Tax Hike Taft” has proven to be the most liberal governor in Ohio history, and the other is guns. Taft has yet to approve concealed-carry legislation in Ohio, and has threatened to veto bills that don’t meet his specific qualifications.

Activists have since devised a clever and attention-grabbing tactic, with which they’ll target the governor’s mansion in Bexley at 2 p.m. on Sunday, November 30. If they can’t carry concealed firearms in Ohio, they will carry revealed ones. In these so-called “defense walks,” the group Ohioans For Concealed Carry marches while wearing handguns in clearly visible holsters.

Which, by the way, is perfectly legal in Ohio. The point is to show how absurd state gun laws are.

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