Protection from predators, both two-legged and four

Courtesy Oleg Volk

"We know what we need to do to keep people safe in Cleveland. As a local municipality, we should be able to say where you can't carry guns."
- Valarie McCall, chief of government affairs for the city of Cleveland

"We'd certainly like to keep guns out of parks."
- John Gibbon, Cleveland Heights' law director

Those were just a couple of the comments made in the aftermath of the Ohioans For Concealed Carry v. City of Clyde case that upheld statewide preemption of local gun laws. Since the case started as a result of Clyde's ban on firearms in their parks, the media tried to spin that case as being just about the parks.

Of course, that wasn't true at all since the primary issue was preemption, but it did certainly have a direct ramification on parks themselves, as it should. There were very good reasons why parks were not included on the list of places where guns are automatically banned under Ohio law. Opponents of the law tried to spin it by saying guns don't belong near swingsets and baseball games. Even if you buy that faulty logic, it conveniently ignores the fact that parks encompass far more than just the playground areas and that some of those parts can be very dangerous.

Take for example the Cleveland woman who was beaten with a rock while walking her dog in a Cleveland area Metropark (she later died), or the woman who was paralyzed after being shot in the back while walking in the Lorain Metroparks. Both these incidents happened last year.

Just this past, a woman was attacked at Quail Hollow State Park in what investigators are calling an attempted abduction. The woman was able to fight off her attackers and escape.

In a video aired by 19 Action News, an unidentified man says that the park is "an area... that you don't think you need the security, but maybe you do." Pro-tip: Parks don't have a magic boundary that keeps the bad guys out.

Another recent incident in Cleveland highlighted that point when two men were shot in a Cleveland park, apparently the victims of an attempted mugging. People like McCall or Gibbon will tell you that if you ban guns in parks incidents like these won't happen, though murder, robbery, and rape are already illegal.

Ignoring the problem won't make it go away, and disarming potential victims doesn't keep them safe if they are targeted... it only makes it safer for the criminals who would prey upon them.

READERSHIP INTERACTION

heystoopid: Sad invalid conclusion drawn from evidence not presented in the article , the reality it appears trying to confuse people with the ban on military style assault rifles easily converted to full auto fire by anyone with access to a simple machine workshop with a maximum useable range on windless days of 400 yards(barrels under the common 15" are really crap for accurate shooting past 400 yards at a 6" red bull ) . The CEP of standard military machine loaded cartridges is a mere 4.5" at 100 yards , by the way .

Your average standard competition match rifle shooter uses the good old fashioned single shot bolt action rifle with barrel length > 26" and special hand loaded rounds with sophisticated designed projectiles and these shooters start at 600 yards and move onto 800 and 1200 yard shooting ranges .

The posee picture appears to be a possible IAI AR15 clone with a much shorter standard 15" barrel length . The polite expression is that ain't no competition match shooting rifle as your standard winchester match .22 model 52 rifle will out shoot it on the traget range three hundred yards or better even with iron sights .

Buried as fiction or fear mongering or improper description or tool holding the wrong weapon , take your pick .

I normally respond to comments on the Examiner site, but this one was a comment from Digg. Interesting how anyone who can throw some jargon into a comment suddenly thinks they're an expert, isn't it? If "heystoopid" had ever gone to Camp Perry for the NRA Service Rifle Championships or CMP Rifle Week he might have seen something like this:

Thank you to ORPA president David Johnson for that pic. Though David is practicing dry fire in that image, AR-15's certainly are used in competition.

It also amazes me that people who think criminals who aren't smart enough to pick up brass at a crime scene will suddenly become gunsmiths and be able to "easily" convert a semi-automatic to an automatic. If it is so easy, why doesn't it happen regularly already? There currently is no "Assault Weapons Ban," so there should be machine gun wielding crooks on every street corner, right?