Lawmakers Scrambling After Simple Error Could Turn Millions of Gun Owners into Law Breakers
“We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” Those words have humorously been held up as the most alarming to any conservative, and a scandal in Ohio is demonstrating exactly why so many citizens distrust their own lawmakers.
According to WHIO, representatives in Ohio’s Capitol apparently didn’t bother closely reading a gun control bill before voting it into law.
In what is being called a “mistake,” a bill was passed despite containing wording that could turn millions of law-abiding gun owners into criminals overnight.
“The bill … attempted to align Ohio law with federal law regarding short-barrel weapons, or generally speaking shotguns with barrel lengths less than 16 inches,” that news outlet reported. (The National Firearms Act of 1934 actually refers to shotguns with barrel lengths of less than 18 inches, not 16 as WHIO reported. — Ed. note)
But nobody seemed to actually check the wording of the bill before state lawmakers voted on it.
“As the bill was being drafted, a misplaced paragraph unintentionally lumped a variety of long guns into a prohibited category,” according to WHIO.
Basically, the language of the bill incorrectly made any long gun with a pistol grip illegal once the law goes into effect a month from now. The problem is that countless currently legal guns, ranging from home defense shotguns to common sporting rifles, could all fall into the prohibited category.
That wasn’t the intent of lawmakers, who are now scrambling to find a solution.
“It’s legally murky right now,” state Rep. Niraj Antani, a Republican, told Dayton Daily News. “It could prohibit the sale of some firearms, which we do not want to do. That was a mistake. Our hope right now is to fix that mistake by the effective date so that it never affects anyone.”
Yes, it was Republicans who helped push the bill through even with its glaring error.
“You took a constitutional oath to protect the people of this country. Will you enforce an unconstitutional law against your own people?” demanded Eva Silvers, an Ohio pro-gun advocate.
So what’s the solution? Lawmakers including Rep. Antani offered weak assurances that local law enforcement would just ignore the glaring error in the law.
“(H)e doesn’t believe county prosecutors would enforce that portion of it,” Dayton Daily News explained.
But that half-baked response of trusting the government to not enforce a mistake made by the government didn’t sit well with many gun owners.
“We’ll already be prosecuted by being picked up. We’ll already be considered guilty. We just became felons. It’s not if the law passes — it passed,” July Sparks of the Black Swamp Oathkeepters told the newspaper.
“We would prefer they deal with it immediately because it is causing a lot of concern and confusion among gun owners in Ohio,” Dean Rieck from gun rights group Buckeye Firearms told WHIO News.
Some representatives in the legislature are scrambling to amend the law before it goes into effect.
“(M)embers have prepared an amendment that would remove any alleged ambiguity,” stated John Fortney, a spokesperson for Republicans in the state Senate. But that process could be time-consuming.
Here’s a helpful idea: Actually read and review bills before voting on them.
While human error can happen to the best of us, it’s simply appalling that numerous Republicans missed this major mistake and tied their legally-binding names to a measure that could turn their constituents into criminals.
The entire point of having trusted representatives is so that citizens can go about their busy lives without proof-reading and debating every single piece of legislation that passes through the Capitol. If our elected officials can’t even be trusted to do this core part of their jobs, perhaps voters should think about replacing them.
CORRECTION, Feb. 25, 2019: The Western Journal quoted an article from WHIO that stated that federal law defined a “short-barreled” shotgun as a shotgun with a barrel of under 16 inches. In fact, the definition is of a shotgun with a barrel of under 18 inches or an overall length of under 26 inches.
We have added an editor’s note to the article following the incorrect statement, and apologize for any confusion the misinformation may have caused.
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