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Florida Shooting May Have Slowed Bills to Loosen Gun Rules in Ohio

A photo of Senate President Larry Obhof.
KAREN KASLER
/
STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU

There are 22 bills related to guns pending in the Ohio Legislature right now. It’s hard to predict what might happen to them after the deadly Florida school shooting last week and Gov. John Kasich’s new willingness to embrace some gun regulations.

Republican Senate President Larry Obhof isn’t saying what will happen with gun bills in the days following the deaths of 17 people at a high school in Florida. But he says lawmakers are considering ways to beef up security in Ohio’s schools.

“We’ve talked about additional funding, potentially for more school safety measures like what we saw with the previous grant program. We’ve had pretty preliminary conversations at this point.”

Pending bills include those to eliminate the need for a conceal carry license for anyone who can legally buy a gun, and measures that would allow conceal-carry weapons permit holders to carry in at the Statehouse, in courthouses and government buildings.

But there are also bills to ban so-called bump stocks and imitation guns and to beef up background checks.

Jo Ingles is a professional journalist who covers politics and Ohio government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau. She reports on issues of importance to Ohioans including education, legislation, politics, and life and death issues such as capital punishment. Jo started her career in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid 80’s when she helped produce a televised presidential debate for ABC News, worked for a creative services company and served as a general assignment report for a commercial radio station. In 1989, she returned back to her native Ohio to work at the WOSU Stations in Columbus where she began a long resume in public radio.