Stand-Your-Ground law is under attack by weak and betraying Republicans in Columbus, and we need gun owners to take action NOW to defeat them!
OGO’s members and supporters like you, my friend, have been bombarding the Ohio Statehouse with phone calls, emails and social media messages demanding Stand-Your-Ground law ever since this General Assembly kicked off in 2019.
And we are making progress!
The Ohio House nearly voted on HB381 on the House floor back in July, and we are pushing hard to get a vote on the House floor yet this Lame Duck session.
But now weak-kneed Republican Representative Kyle Koehler (R-Springfield) has introduced a bill that is intended to derail all of the progress we’ve made already and sabotage HB381!
HB381 by pro-gun champions Candice Keller and Ron Hood is a FABULOUS Stand-Your-Ground law and does exactly what gun owners need it to do by:
1) Repealing Ohio’s infamous “duty to retreat” statute.
Law-abiding citizens would no longer be forced to try to run away from violent criminals before defending themselves.
2) Provide criminal immunity for gun owners who were forced to defend themselves from violent attack.
In other words, anti-gun county prosecutors (Cuyahoga county, Franklin county, etc) would no longer be able to arrest everyone who used a firearm in self-defense and victimize them a second time by dragging them into court and forcing them to spend their life savings on lawyers and court costs just to prove they were the victim!
3) Provide civil immunity for gun owners who were forced to defend themselves from violent attack.
The thug or the family of some thug who violently attacked an innocent person should NOT be allowed to sue the person they attacked for simply defending themselves!
4) Provide for enactment for Stand-Your-Ground protections!
HB381 has a clear enactment process for invoking Stand-Your-Ground protections. By establishing a pre-trial immunity hearing, innocent citizens could easily be spared tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees by being able to file a simple motion saying they acted in self-defense.
5) Provide for “threatened use of force” so that citizens can use their firearm to deescalate violent or life-threatening situations.
Current Ohio law is silent about the time period between when a firearm is removed from the holster and when the trigger is pulled.
That leaves anyone who deploys a firearm to deescalate a violent situation open to an “assault with a deadly weapon” charge by the criminal, and this bill would change that forever!
As you can see, every single portion of HB381 was carefully constructed to protect the Ohio gun owner who puts on their firearm every day to protect themselves and their loved ones should they, God forbid, be forced into that nightmare we all pray we can avoid.
That’s why Ohio Gun Owners is pushing hard to pass HB381 as a complete, comprehensive self-defense bill, because each and every part of it is integral to protecting good people like you.
Having helped pass Stand-Your-Ground law in the only three states to pass it since the Travon Martin/George Zimmerman trial in 2012 (Missouri, Iowa and Wyoming), I know for a certainty that it is very hard to pass a bad version of the bill and then come back later to fix it.
The fact is, nobody wants to do anything “controversial,” and nobody wants to do it twice.
My grandpa always used to tell me the proverbial line: “if you’re going to do something, you may as well do it right so that you don’t have to come back and fix it.”
The fact is, HB381 as written is exactly the bill gun owners deserve, because it does a very good job of reversing Ohio law and favoring the citizen rather than the criminal.
But that’s where backstabbing Republican Representative Kyle Koehler comes in.
You see, Koehler hates the full-orbed Stand-Your-Ground law.
That’s why he is introducing a counter-bill to HB381 that GUTS Stand-Your-Ground law.
You see, Koehler believes 100% that gun owners should NOT be able to draw a firearm and protect themselves like the St Louis couple, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, did when the violent mob stormed up their streets.
So Koehler’s bill removes the “threatened use of force” section of Stand-Your-Ground law completely, opening gun owners back up to “assault with a deadly weapon” charge like the anti-gun St Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner is trying to do to the McCloskeys.
Then, in a blatant move to do the bidding of the Ohio Trial Lawyers Association (OAJ), Koehler removed immunity for BOTH civil and criminal cases, ensuring that anti-gun prosecutors and thugs can continue victimizing innocent gun owners in court.
But Koehler didn’t stop there.
Republican backstabbing Representative Kyle Koehler even removed the enactment clause from Stand-Your-Ground law!
That means that gun owners no longer have a straight-up process by which to invoke Stand-Your-Ground protections until they are already IN the courtroom during trial, already spending tens of thousands in legal fees!
In fact, the ONLY portion of Stand-Your-Ground law that Koehler was “gracious” enough to keep in the bills was removing Ohio’s “duty to retreat” statute, which in and of itself will NOT adequately protect gun owners from anti-gun prosecutors or thugs.
But here’s the dirty secret: Koehler’s watered down bill, designed to derail HB381, likely won’t even accomplish its stated goal of repealing Ohio’s duty to retreat law!
You see, in 2018’s Lame Duck session, HB228 was the bill everyone was focused on for the main reason that it was supposed to “repeal Ohio’s duty to retreat law.”
But when the trial lawyers and gun-control lobby and the media started attacking Republicans, weak legislators like Kyle Koehler folded up like a cheap suit and removed the duty-to-retreat repealer from the bill and passed it without ANY major protections protections for gun owners.
That’s why gun owners need to take action now!
The fact is, people like Kyle Koehler do what they do because they have no principle, no convictions or core beliefs on the issue.
That’s why Kyle Koehler refused to cosponsor HB381 in the first place.
To people like cowardly Kyle Koehler, gun owners like you and me are pawns to be played with on their political chess boards. And whenever another entity comes along to put a big fat PAC check in their pockets, they stick a knife in our backs.
It’s time for gun owners to say hell no.
POUND on the legislature: send your email DEMANDING the full-fledged Stand-Your-Ground bill, HB381!
For Ohio,
Chris Dorr
Executive Director
Ohio Gun Owners
P.S. Republicans like Kyle Koehler have treated gun owners like you and me unfairly for far too long, farming gun owners for votes during elections and giving us NOTHING in return.
The reason why every single state surrounding Ohio already has Stand-Your-Ground law is because gun owners beat their politicians’ backsides with a political whip-switch until they forced their legislatures to do the right thing.