There have just been two mass shootings in Ohio; GOP members say gun regulation is not the solution

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Mass shootings occurred in two major Ohio cities in one weekend. The cities of Columbus and Dayton want better gun safety laws, but most Republicans in the Statehouse won’t allow it, saying it won’t solve the problem.

Columbus police are asking the public for help with any information that could lead to the arrest of the shooter or shooters who wounded at least 10 people in the Short North, the city’s entertainment district. According to CPD, two of the victims were minors.

Authorities said the 19-year-old suspect, who was allegedly driving the getaway car, turned himself in to police 12 hours after the shooting. Court documents show he was charged with obstruction, but not with the shooting. On Monday morning, he was charged and is in custody.

All victims are expected to survive – something City Attorney Zach Klein is grateful for – but he said this cannot continue to happen.

“The response must be accountability and enforcement,” Klein said.

He added that not only criminals must be held accountable.

“Policymakers on the Republican side have created a world where everyone has a gun and they are so easily accessible,” he said.

Klein is fighting for gun safety legislation. The city requires gun owners to lock their guns around children when not using them and bans magazines that hold 30 or more rounds of ammunition. However, they cannot enforce them due to ongoing court disputes.

Columbus seems to be constantly getting under the skin of legislators. Last year alone, lawmakers found problems in the city over gun safety laws, banning flavored tobacco and suggesting a voluntary ceasefire after a series of shootings.

We covered security attempts by the city of Columbus and Klein, as well as stories about home rule, assessing how urban areas try to pass firearm safety laws only to be shot down by state Republicans.

Ohio Court Strikes Down Columbus Gun Safety Law

And while Klein was locating shooting suspects in his city, another mass shooting turned deadly just 70 miles west in Dayton.

According to Dayton police, seven people were shot around 1 a.m. Monday. It was a drive-by shooting before a party in an empty house. A 22-year-old woman died at the scene and an 18-year-old man “is in life-threatening condition,” Lt. Col. Eric Henderson said at a news conference Monday afternoon. According to police, the remaining injuries are not life-threatening.

“There was probably more than one gun,” Henderson said.

ABC News Dayton affiliate WKEF reported that police initially said eight people were shot, but during a later press conference said it was seven.

“There were multiple minors and young adults at this address,” Henderson added. “It could have been a lot worse and there is the potential that we could have a second person lose their life.”

Dayton state Rep. Tom Young (R-Washington Township) said the shooting in his community is terrible, but gun restrictions are not the way to solve the problem.

“We need to do more prevention,” Young said. “We can show them that literacy matters, and you learn to read and you learn to follow a different path.”

It repairs “broken families,” he said, which will ease the problem of violence.

“I have a lot of families come to my house that have gone through a divorce and have two separate families,” Young said, noting that he is divorced but has good parents in common. “I was surprised by the environment these young people are growing up in.”

Klein said we can talk about parenting in a respectful way that still gets to the heart of the systemic ways some children fall into violence.

“Society has failed them, the school system has failed them, their parents have failed them, so at two or three in the morning they find themselves in the middle of a shooting – and that is their only solution, how they deal with conflict,” Klein said.

Taking all this into account, tougher gun laws won’t stop criminals, Young said.

“They’re going to get every gun they can get,” he said, noting that it is illegal for teenagers under 18 to have access to firearms. “If there’s gun violence, they’re going to get every gun they can.

Young isn’t the only one who feels this way – both House and Senate leaders have no interest in creating additional gun laws.

However, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has been repeating the issue back and forth.

DeWine appears to have the same goal as Democrats like Klein, and yet he signed every bill loosening firearms restrictions that came across his desk — even after a mass shooting.

In 2019, just outside Young’s in the Oregon District, a gunman killed nine people and injured 27 others.

After that tragedy, DeWine proposed his own form of gun safety legislation, which he then called common sense. This included a new form of state background checks, as well as improvements to existing ones. He told lawmakers he didn’t want to see a gun bill on his desk until they took up his bill. They didn’t do this, and yet he signed every bill that relaxed the regulations.

After like him he bypassed our questions during press conferences in December, we were able to discuss these concerns in a one-on-one conversation with the governor.

Trau: “Do you feel complicit in signing this?”

DeWine: “I’m asking again this year for the legislature to look at the bill that we introduced right after the tragedy in the Oregon and Dayton districts… Basically, this bill says whether you have a family member – and usually it’s a family member who knows what’s going on with this person something bad happens – our law will give you the right to take the matter to court. You must convince the judge, because then and only then will the person’s gun be taken away. And again, please call on the Legislature to take action on this matter.”

Trau: “But you still signed the transfer permit.

DeWine: “Look, I don’t think this poses a real problem. The problem is what will we do in the future?”

One-on-one with Governor DeWine: crimes, complicity, fears

RELATED: One-on-one with Governor DeWine: crimes, complicity, fears

On Monday, DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney spoke with me about the shootings. DeWine wants tougher penalties for repeat offenders, and Tierney admits it’s unclear whether the shooters have any prior convictions.

I asked if DeWine still supports the gun laws he proposed after the 2019 shooting.

“The key issue is that the governor believes it will be declared unconstitutional or has no chance of being passed by the General Assembly,” he said.

Klein believes the governor should be vocal about his desire to implement additional safety guidelines.

“I think the governor can show a lot of leadership here by 1. advocating for common sense, gerrymandering reform and 2. advocating for common sense gun laws,” Klein said.

“We don’t have adequate representation,” said state Rep. Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati). “Most elected officials of the majority party are, on some issues, including this one, held captive by the extremist wing of the party.”

The legislator then referenced a number of different polls, all of which show that Ohioans – as well as people in the United States – want stronger gun legislation.

In a nonpartisan 2023 statewide survey conducted by the USA TODAY Network/Suffolk University, approximately 90% of Ohioans support mandatory background checks and 75% favor safe storage and red flag laws. Nonpartisan School of Public Health Johns Hopkins Bloomberg echoed the results, adding that more than 70% of Americans want people to be able to buy guns through the licensing process. On the partisan divide, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 60% of Republicans and 91% of Democrats oppose the ability to carry a concealed firearm without a permit.

That’s one reason cities know what policies work best for members of their communities, Klein said, adding that lawmakers must stop violating the principle of self-government.

The Ohio Mayors Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of mayors from 30 of the largest cities, routinely asks lawmakers to get out of the way, with Dayton Mayor Jeffrey J. Mims Jr. attended a meeting with Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and Akron Mayor Shammas Malik.

He also said he understood that violence could not be solved by a single solution.

“No law will prevent all crimes, but it can prevent a critical sector of them from occurring,” the lawyer said.