Ohio’s new STRONG Bill: Not strong at all
By Emily Walsh, AIUSA Campaigner on Ending Gun Violence
This week, we received the long-anticipated “STRONG Bill” from Ohio Governor DeWine, catalyzed by the horrific gun massacre in Dayton this past August.
There was just one problem:
It was not strong at all.
The 214-page gun violence bill does almost nothing to make the lives of over 11 million Ohioans safer.
Here are some of the things it doesn’t do:
- Require background checks for the purchase of each gun to stop them from falling into dangerous hands;
- Create any sort of extreme risk law allowing guns to be temporarily removed from people at risk of harming themselves or others;
- Support community-led violence prevention programs;
- Ban assault weapons or the high-capacity magazines that made the Dayton massacre possible.
Here’s what it does do:
- Provide political cover for politicians to be able to say they’ve ‘done something’ on gun violence.
- That’s it — that’s the list.
But we won’t let the list end there. It’s even more important now that Ohio state lawmakers take matters into their own hands to protect their constituents.
There are over a dozen bills languishing in committee that are proven to help save lives. But hesitation from a few key officials means that these bills might never see the light of day.
ACT NOW:
If you live in Ohio, please take action today! Send an email to key lawmakers with just one click.
If you know folks who live in Ohio, please share this action with them!
Someone is killed with a gun every six hours in Ohio. While we can’t stop all gun violence, there are common sense steps we can take. This includes passing S.B. 183 to require universal background checks, S.B. 184 to create an extreme risk law and S.B. 62 to ban accessories that accelerate the rate of a semi-automatic gun’s fire, exponentially increasing its lethality.
We deserve to see how our lawmakers vote on these life-or-death issues — that’s their job. Ask Ohio lawmakers to #DoSomething now.
