SAFETY REFORM

I agree with Kevin Paffrath on achieving safety through gun licensing and permitting. That was my position 20 years ago when I ran for state senator in a special election and it is still the case. 

My position was set over 40 years ago in what happened with my aunt. My aunt lived in Youngstown Ohio. She was widow living alone in a secluded part of the town. She was almost crippled with arthritis and everyday my other aunt who lived a few miles away would visit her. There was, at the time, a serial criminal who would break into homes of elderly defenseless women, rob and terrorize them. One might my aunt heard a strange noise in the kitchen. She went in and saw the door knob moving, she screamed ‘Go Way” Instead, a pounding started on the old oak door. My deceased uncle was a builder of the old school , the door and frames he build were of old seasoned heavy duty oak when a 2 x4 actually was 2 inches by 4 inches with a huge deadbolt to match. 

My aunt grabbed the phone off the wall to call the police. The line was silent. It was later found that the lines had been neatly cut. Cell phones were three decades on the future. Turning to face the door she screamed, “ Go away”. My aunt said until the day she died that she heard an almost animalistic growl as the door and indeed whole wall shuttered as a body was thrown against it. Shrieking, my aunt hobbled to her dresser and got her husband’s antique pistol where it laid for 15 years. With fingers so arthritic she could barely hold the gun she tuned and pointed it toward the kitchen door as the wood was starting to splinter apart 

Now before going on we should consider what gun control advocates would have wanted my aunt to do? I ask what would they do in this situation? What would you do? What would your grandparents do? Another question is what did the police actually do later? 

Well this is what happened while holding the gun in trembling hands, it went off and the bullet lodged in the door frame and the criminal ran away unharmed 

The next day my aunt came over to see her sister and found her huddled in a corner where she had been all night 

The police were called and what did they do? They took her gun. She was a criminal for having it. My uncle, her brother, who was a Captain in the Police Department got it back for her. But I ask, Should having a gun be conditioned on in having a member of your family in the police department?” 

From that day forward, I have been a supporter of the right to own and carry a gun by trained, law abiding persons for the simple reason that you will never know when a criminal will attack you, your family or those around you. I do not apologize for that position. If elected I will put an initiative on the ballot for the people to decide if citizens should have the right to carry and the circumstances on which they could get a concealed permit to carry. Whatever the People decide I would abide. It is the People who run the statenot the politicians so let the People decide.