After Deadly Weekend In Cincinnati, DeWine Wants Gun Control

Most Monday mornings, if we write about a violent weekend someplace, we’re typically talking about Chicago. To be fair, we usually talk about Chicago because it’s the place where there tends to be a lot of violence to talk about.

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However, this is a new world, unfortunately, and the violence doesn’t just propagate in the Windy City. It’s everywhere.

This past weekend, one of the worst violence hotspots was Cincinnati, Ohio.

At least 18 people were shot, four fatally, during a violent night in Cincinnati, police said.

Ten people were shot on East McMicken Avenue and Lang Street in Over-the-Rhine, four were shot on Chalfonte Place in Avondale, and three were shot near Lincoln and Gilbert avenues in Walnut Hills. An additional shooting later Sunday morning was reported by The Associated Press, bringing the total wounded to 18.

During the incident at Over-the-Rhine, one died at the scene and another at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center; they were identified in a statement as 34-year-old Robert Rogers and 30-year-old Jaquiez Grant.

“These all seem to be separate, independent incidents, but horrific and tragic that we have this much violence and potential for that much loss of life in our city,” Assistant Police Chief Paul Neudigate said.

To be sure, it sounds awful and I mourn for all of those who lost loved ones in the violence.

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What I’d rather not mourn, however, are the gun rights of law-abiding Ohioans. Yet that’s precisely what Governor Mike DeWine seems to think the problem actually is.

An outbreak of gun violence in Cincinnati early Sunday killed four people, injured 14 in four separate incidents, and renewed calls for action statewide on gun violence which were first voiced a year ago after Dayton’s Oregon District shooting.

“Ohio must act,” Gov Mike DeWine said in a statement issues Sunday. “As more and more people are hurt and killed by gun violence, I am again urging Ohio’s legislature to pass our #STRONGOhio bill. This bill will help protect our citizens while also respecting the Second Amendment and due process rights.”

Oh boy, where do we start?

First, we don’t really know much about these particular incidents. Police are still investigating, so we don’t even really know who carried out these attacks or why they did it. We damn sure don’t know anything about how they obtained their weapons in the first place.

In other words, we have absolutely no information to suggest that DeWine’s gun control proposals would have done a damn thing to stop this attack or not. Based on how effective gun control historically has been, I’d say it wouldn’t have done much.

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However, that’s especially true for DeWine’s bill. It pushes non-mandatory background checks and increased penalties for gun crime, which may be all fine and good, as well as crisis intervention, but we don’t know whether this was a “crisis” kind of attack or if it was something else. DeWine is taking a page out of the Democrats’ playbook, though, and making a shooting all about his gun control bill.

It’s not, and the STRONG Ohio bill wouldn’t have accomplished a damn thing to prevent those deadly attacks.

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