By Dave Workman|Senior Editor
Ohio gun control advocates are pushing a “universal background check” initiative to the legislature, an d if that doesn’t work, they will try to get it on the 2020 ballot.
An Ohio gun control lobbying group is launching a signature-gathering effort in hopes of getting state lawmakers to expand background check requirements to al firearms sales, including private transactions.
While Buckeye State media identifies the organization as a “gun safety group,” Ohioans for Gun Safety is actually a gun control organization.
The group’s website says this:
“Ohioans for Gun Safety is a grassroots organization exploring common sense background checks for gun safety in Ohio. As Ohioans and Americans, we understand that we must balance our rights and our responsibilities in order to stop gun violence and gun tragedies. By listening to and having conversations with Ohioans about their experiences and ideas, we will build a broad-based, inclusive coalition that will, ultimately, make our state a safer place for our children and grandchildren through common sense background checks for gun safety.”
Nine other states have so-called “universal background checks” on all firearms transactions, with a few narrow exemptions for transfers between immediate family members.
In one of those states, Washington, critics of the background check requirement—adopted by voters in 2014—argue that the law has been a total failure.
Washington voters five years ago approved Initiative 594, the so-called “universal background check” measure that was sold to voters as a “gun violence” prevention measure, but the effectiveness of that is in serious doubt today, critics argue.
I-594 was passed in 2014, and the state’s two most high-profile “mass shooting” incidents occurred in 2016. There was a triple homicide at a teen party in Mukilteo and a few months later, five shoppers were murdered at the Cascade Mall in Burlington.
In Seattle, the headquarters city of initiative backers at the billionaire-supported Alliance for Gun Responsibility, homicides spiked dramatically in three years following passage of their background check initiative. In 2015, there were 24 murders in the city, followed by 18 in 2016, but in 2017 the homicides spiked to 28 and last year there were 32 slayings in the Jet City.
According to the Cleveland American, Ohioans for Gun Safety, a gun control group, needs at least 133,000 signatures “before they can present their proposal to the state legislature before the next session.” Then, if lawmakers do not pass the measure during the following four months, the report explained, the gun control group needs to gather another 133,000 signatures on a petition to put the measure on the 2020 ballot.
That will be critical for Ohio gun owners, because it will be on the ballot with the national election, and that will bring out lots of voters. That’s a gun control strategy because “blue” state voters will almost certainly approve such a measure.
The State News reported that the Ohio Ballot Board has approved the issue as “following the single-subject rule.”
