Shortly after last year’s shooting massacre on the Las Vegas strip, Ohio Gov. John Kasich convened a working group to explore possible reforms to state gun laws.
A Republican, Kasich wanted to be sure the panel’s members clearly supported the Second Amendment. Yet it also was to be bipartisan, with members from across the political spectrum.
The panel’s work accelerated after the Valentine’s Day slaughter at a high school in Parkland, Florida, and it eventually produced a legislative package of what Kasich labeled “sensible changes that should keep people safer.” The legislation was introduced by a Republican lawmaker in the GOP-dominated Legislature.
It went nowhere.
Among other objections, the Republican leadership raised constitutional concerns about a provision allowing courts to order that weapons be seized from people showing signs of violence.
“The way we put it together, the fact that you had people on both sides of the issue — I would have thought something would have happened,” said Kasich, who watched the bill package languish in legislative chambers run by his own party. “But the negative voices come in unison and they come strongly.”
The Ohio experience is not unusual.
An Associated Press review of all firearms-related legislation passed this year, encompassing the first full state legislative sessions since the Las Vegas attack, shows a decidedly mixed record. Gun control bills did pass in a number of states, but the year was not the national game-changer that gun-control advocates had hoped it could be.
Even in a year that included yet another mass school shooting and an unprecedented level of gun-control activism, state legislatures across the country fell back to largely predictable and partisan patterns.
“It’s exactly what happened after Newtown: The anti-gun states became more anti-gun and
