Posted on 01/10/2002 4:52:10 AM PST by Corporate Law
Judge strikes down concealed carry 'ban'
By Kimball Perry, Post staff reporter
A judge today ruled unconstitutional Ohio's law that effectively prevents law-abiding citizens from carrying a concealed weapon for protection or work.
Ohio's concealed carry laws ''are unconstitutional on their face and as applied to the plaintiffs in that said (laws) deny to plaintiffs, in particular, and the law-abiding citizens with in Hamilton County, in general, the right to carry a concealed firearm for their defense and security, contrary to their Ohio Constitutional right,'' Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman noted in his decision released today.
Ruehlman also ordered a permanent injunction in the case preventing police from making arrests for carrying a concealed weapon by ''law-abiding citizens within Hamilton County.''
Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen said he will appeal Ruehlman's decision.
''We anticipated it,'' Allen said, noting he already has his written appeal ready to file. ''We're going to appeal and ask for a stay. Any change in this law should come from the Legislature.''
The original suit was filed in 2000 by Cincinnati private investigator Chuck Klein Jr. and others - a hair stylist, pizza delivery man and can teen food truck workers - who said they needed to carry concealed weapons for their work or safety.
''It doesn't surprise me,'' Klein said today. ''Outstanding. The law was a bad law and the (Ohio) Legislature over the years has refused to look at it. This was the only option we had left.''
In today's ruling, Ruehlman noted people should have the right to protect themselves.
''Amidst all of the baying from gun opponents is the irrefutable fact that there will always be people in our society who refuse to follow any rules and who can never be reasoned with or rehabilitated,'' he wrote. ''These people have no conscience and no qualms about doing harm to innocent persons.''
Ohio is one of less than 10 states which outlaws concealed weapons. Klein filed the suit - with the help of gun advocacy agencies The Second Amendment Foundation and Ohioans for Concealed Carry - in hopes of getting either the law overturned or a permitting process established.
''I wouldn't object to a permitting system,'' Klein said, ''as long as it isn't an Orwellian or Draconian system that makes you jump through a whole bunch of hoops.''
This isn't the first time Ruehlman has been involved in controversial decisions involving guns.
In 1999, Ruehlman tossed out a lawsuit in which the city of Cincinnati sued gun manufacturers, distributors and trade association, blaming them for negligence. The guns, that suit accused, were designed without proper safety features and, as a result, the city sought to have those manufacturers repay the city for police, medical and other services related to violence because guns contribute to public health problems.
Writing that people - not guns - kill, Ruehlman threw out that suit.
Publication date: 01-10-02
In today's ruling, Ruehlman noted people should have the right to protect themselves.
''Amidst all of the baying from gun opponents is the irrefutable fact that there will always be people in our society who refuse to follow any rules and who can never be reasoned with or rehabilitated,'' he wrote. ''These people have no conscience and no qualms about doing harm to innocent persons.''
As an ex-Buckeye, I can ASSURE you that Ohio SPECIALIZES in electing SPINELESS politicians. (Does the name John Glenn ring a bell?)
But, really, Ohioans are BEST at electing WORTHLESS RINOs. Viz. Mssrs. DeWine and Voinovich, who are virtually indistinguishable from Feinstein and Kennedy in much of their Senate voting.
"Writing that people - not guns - kill, Ruehlman threw out that suit."
''Amidst all of the baying from gun opponents is the irrefutable fact that there will always be people in our society who refuse to follow any rules and who can never be reasoned with or rehabilitated,'' he wrote. ''These people have no conscience and no qualms about doing harm to innocent persons.''
In fact there is a right to drive a car, encompassed by the right to travel freely at one's inclination and under one's own direction along the public way. Just because we've been brainwashed to think that driving is a "privelege" doesn't mean that it actually is.
Already the law in Vermont, now if we can just get the other 49 to do the same.
I thought we had that already... "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms......"
Mike Allen has a history of wasting our money tilting at windmills. ...The judge, on the other hand, is a truly admirable example of reason working its magic on society. Kudos to him.
His strategy is obvious. Get a stay, and then delay, delay, delay in the legislature...all the while the unconstitutional law stays in effect. I hope the citizens of Ohio don't let him get away with it.
While your comment is true, I don't see much difference in the license granted to carry a gun and that giving the right to drive or be married. But I have not looked into it much. Thanks.
???!!!
No permit is required in Vermont; it has no concealed carry law at all.
'Vermont-style' carry is the standard we should be striving for!This is the weakness in our current system of legislative review: an activist legislator can get any law he wants to passed any way he wants to (including the deceit that is a hallmark of the current crop of antigunners at, say, VPI) and it's law until someone has the funding and the will to challenge it in court and fight the legions of well-funded lawyers who attempt to obstruct and delay its overturn. That's why I always felt the phrase "Unintended Consequences" was a bit charitable - they're intended, all right.
That's right. For every twenty unconstitutional laws written we're lucky if we get even one overturned.
Others have said they don't like licences for guns, and I agree with them. After taking a gun safety class with the wife, the only thing I would prefer as a law before being able to purchase a gun would be proof a safety class was taken. Never thought I'd say that, but after seeing some people renting guns at the range...
Private sector could conduct the classes for a fee. It goes hand-in-hand with the gun shop to provide the classes. Do that or, joint venture with a private sector business. Say, getting ten percent of the fee for sending a persson to the class. Similar to affiliate programs on the WWW.
Imagine three gun shops in one town but only one doesn't require a safety class "diploma". That gun shop would be out of business in a hurry by the town folks protest as well as the local grocer and every other business ostracizing the gun shop owner and his employees. They'll do a better job than the ATF.
Under the basically dishonest doctrine of "selective incorporation," the SCOTUS has used the 14th Amendment to apply most but not all of the Bill of Rights to the states. I don't believe any court has yet used the 14th Amendment to apply the Second Amendment to the states. I have yet to see an intellectually coherent defense of this failure to incorporate the Second Amendment.
If you have to ask permission, it isn't a right.
The bottom line is that with the current law, if you obey it, you're dead before you use a key to open the glove box.
We should not need a "license" to exercise our second amendment right any more than we need a "license" to practice our first amendment right (freedom of speech and religion).
Agree! My license to carry is the second amendment.
No - what we need is NO license for any state as Vermont is today.
Let's see how the gun control nuts and the Nazi left spin this to look like it's good news for them, LOL.
"I disagree we shouldn't need any license!".....correct!
This un-Constitutional "law" never should have been in, or come from, the legislature.
Writing that people - not guns - kill, Ruehlman threw out that suit.
We all know those words are fact. So precise and to the point -- reality. Then watch the con-control parasites put forth all manner of tail-chasing rationalizations in futile hopes of changing the price to the point fact--guns don't kill, people kill.
Continued below...
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." - Atlas Shrugged
The U.S. Code contains all federal statutes and consists of 56,117 single-spaced pages. Taking up nine feet of shelf space consisting of forty-seven volumes. A footnoted version has 230 volumes and 36 paperback supplements. The Code of Federal Regulations consists of more than 134,500 pages of regulatory law spanning twenty feet of shelf space. Judicial precedents for Federal law stretch across 490 feet of law-library shelving that consists of 2,756 volumes.
How many of of those laws have you broken?
I have read more than one lawyer's description of how small business owners struggle with the laws and regulations. Stating that virtually every small business breaks the law each day. Medium and Large businesses do too.
There are also a huge number of laws that affect the individual. Probably the only people not breaking the law are mostly young children. Give them a few more years and they'll be sucked into the "criminal" category too
Do you see what has happened? If it was possible to have enough cops to apprehend and process all law breakers and run them through the justice system society would run headlong into destruction. In a day society would come to a screeching halt.
Be thankful that all lawbreakers are not apprehended because we all might believe that we're just a bunch of criminals gone amuck and that our true nature as everyday heroes is just an illusion.
In essence, that's just what the politicians, bureaucrats, news reporters, journalists, academia professors and Enviro-cult activists have been implying if not telling us.
"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind. -- Frederick Bastiat, The Law (1850)
"More Guns, Less Crime", by John Lott gives powerful statistical proof that law-abiding citizens that own guns is the best means of personal self-defense. Being used 2,000,000 times a year for self-defense while 98% of the time just brandishing a gun is enough to fend off the criminal. As Lott says, "an armed society is a polite society."
The National Crime Victimization Report, U.S. Department of Justice shows that women who respond passively are 2.5 times more likely to be seriously injured than women who use a gun to defend themselves. Lott shows powerful evidence that it is poor minorities who live in high crime areas who benefit the most from being able to defend themselves. But you'll never hear that from the news media.
Compare that to Michael Bellesiles' book, "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture", and the media that championed the book to beat the band. But the book turned out to be total fraud.
Fast Facts from More Guns, Less Crime
Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups): 1,500
Number of 5 year-olds or younger who die from gun accidents in the home.: 30
Children 14 to 15 years of age are 14.5 times more likely to die from automobile injuries, 5 times more likely to die from drowning or fire and burns, and 3 times more likely to die from bicycle accidents than they are to die from gun accidents.
Make no mistake about it, without your life you have nothing. Your life is precious and everything to you.
The facts herein speak volumes about the twenty thousand unconstitutional gun laws written by the supposed compassionate politicians. Imagine that, 20,000 gun laws that infringes or violates every American's 2nd Amendment right to own and carry a gun -- hindering you and every other American from fully exercising his and her highest moral and individual right. It speaks volumes about other parasitical elites that are complicit in advocating and supporting the abuse of objective-law-abiding citizens.
Principle One: No person, group of persons, or government may initiate force, threat of force, or fraud against any individual.
Principle Two: Force may be morally and legally used only in self-defense against those who violate Principle One.
Principle Three: No exceptions shall be allowed for Principle One and Two.
Principle One is first a law. For every instance that a person has force initiated against them there is a loss to that person. Only the person/victim knows the true value of their loss. The law underlying Principle One is absolute. As absolute as gravity. As true as physics law.
Why objective law? Because there are so many laws -- political agenda laws -- virtual every person is a politically correct criminal. Or is that a politically incorrect criminal. Either way, you get The Point of objective law. The Point is.
BANG, PING, and BUMP!
Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen said he reluctantly filed the Tuesday petition on behalf of Leis. ''. . .It's not a matter of do you support concealed carry or don't you. It's about how you go about it,'' he said. (From 07-26-00)
''In my 25 years of law enforcement, I have never seen anything like this,'' Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen said. ''It's not necessarily the guns that are the problem. It's the people that are using them.''(From 08-25-01)
There was also a quote in which he advocates licensing, intensive background checks, and regular compulsory training to possess a gun...a view frequently blatted by FOP ex-president Fangman.
Whether I like it or not I will obey this law so I can both carry AND drop my kids off at school without going to jail if caught.
Eaker
Yes, I've looked at the decision myself and this is a key claim. J. Ruehlman notes several times the testimony of officers that anyone carying a gun openly would be stopped, arrested, and charged with inciting panic(!). That citizens actually have the right to bear arms in defense of themselves without concealed carry in light of the present environment of enforcement is what the judge denies.
I can't see this ruling standing up on appeal. I'll be interested to see what the OSSC does with it, though, insofar as Ruehlman makes much of the fact that a right guaranteed by the Ohio constitution cannot now be exercised without fear of arrest.
In other words, judges should be isolated from reality in order to judge impartially? Yeah, right. These folks must take the average Americans for chumps.
Good question. Rights are not "granted" by governments, you are born with them. When the constitution was written, the founders made it very clear that they were enumerating (not granting) rights that were self evident.
Even an animal has the right to defend it's life and that of it's offspring, yet there are actually people that would take that away from human beings.
Defending yourself, your family and your way of life is a basic human right, not a privilege to be licensed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.