The duty to retreat is something that anti-gunners love to push and, for the life of me, I don’t understand why. I try to make it a point to understand my opponents so that I can address their concerns rationally. I get their thinking on most topics out there, even if I fundamentally disagree with it.

Saying that people should have to waste precious moments during a life-threatening situation to determine if escape is possible rather than acting in self-defense, however, makes no sense to me.

Luckily, Republicans in the Ohio House apparently agree with me on this.

Ohio House Republicans  have signed on to the “stand your ground” self-defense bill introduced last week.

That’s setting up suggestions that it could be part of a compromise to pass Governor Mike DeWine’s gun violence plan issued following the Augst mass shooting in Dayton. Ohio Public Radio’s Karen Kasler reports.

The Stand Your Ground bill eliminates the duty to retreat before using deadly force in a public place. It’s expected that at least a dozen House Republicans are opposed to changes in gun laws, but all but one House Republican voted for the Stand Your Ground bill last year. DeWine says he’d rather Stand Your Ground not be combined with his gun violence bill.

Whether that means DeWine plans to veto such a bill or not is unclear, though it probably just means he’s skeptical his gun violence plan will pass with that as a part of the bill.

To be fair, he’s probably justified to some degree. For better or worse, Stand Your Ground is controversial and will likely rally anti-gunners far more than DeWine’s current plan does. As it stands, the governor’s proposal is more likely to be hit over not going far enough, which many see as a ridiculous reason to not back a bill.

Yet if Stand Your Ground is included, then it goes too far in their minds.

It doesn’t of course, but will anti-gunners see it that way? Of course not. They never do.

Still, this is good news for people in Ohio. Stand Your Ground doesn’t just cover self-defense with a firearm, but any form of self-defense. It protects people from overzealous prosecution because someone figures the guy with the sprained ankle really could have scaled that fence at the end of the alley and gotten away. That’s what it does and that’s why it’s important.

While anti-gunners have misrepresented Stand Your Ground over and over again, it’s a safe and sane law, something that should be the law in all 50 states. It won’t be, unfortunately, but it should.

Good on Ohio for taking this important step. Now it’s important for the rest of the legislature to step up and make this thing law so the good people of Ohio don’t have to worry about yet one more potential outcome should they be forced to act in self-defense. Good, decent people shouldn’t have to be victimized twice, once by a thug they’re forced to shoot and a second time by the government.