Cincinnati City Council Passes New Gun Laws: 'Lock it Up or Get Locked Up'

Cincinnati City Council unanimously approved an emergency ordinance to amend two city gun laws in the city on Feb. 8, but the city could face legal challenges.

“This is just common sense, and it’s something that research has shown, time and time again, to have a significant impact on preventing tragedies,” Cincinnati mayor Aftab Pureval said. “We have to be able to implement the measures that keep our communities safe and save lives.”

The legislation is co-sponsored by Pureval, vice mayor Jan-Michele Kearney and council members Scotty Johnson, Meeka Owens and Liz Keating, council’s only Republican member. It’s also supported by city manager Sheryl Long.

“This is a problem and we are acting, and we need everyone else to act,” Owens said. “We need to be relentless in the pursuit of protecting people.”

Safe storage

The first ordinance is a safe storage law, which requires gun owners with children living in their home to lock up their weapons in a gun safe or storage box.

The ordinance mentions the October shooting death of a three-year-old in Cincinnati. The child’s six-year-old brother reportedly shot and killed the toddler after finding a loaded gun in their home. The ordinance also mentions the death of an eight-year-old who shot and killed himself after finding a handgun in his house.

“If you do not care enough to keep a loaded weapon away from a child, you are going to be held responsible," Keating said. “Seventy-two percent of all school shootings are from kids who get their guns at home,” Jefferys said. “This will save lives.”

According to the ordinance, gun owners would have the option to install a device on their weapons that would require unlocking to use that weapon, which Kearney said the Cincinnati Police Department will provide for free.

“Our message is lock it up or get locked up,” Kearney said. “You can go to go your neighborhood liaison officer, you can go to district headquarters. We have free locks. There is no excuse to have a gun that’s not locked up.”

Domestic violence

The second ordinance would place tighter restrictions for gun ownership on those who have been convicted of domestic violence or someone who is under a court order for harassment, stalking or threatening an intimate partner or child.

"This legislation is very, very simple. If you are going to do something so horrific that you can get convicted of domestic violence, you do not deserve to have a gun,” Keeting said.

During a Feb. 7 Public Safety and Governance Committee meeting, Cincinnati Police chief Teresea Theetge, who supports the ordinance, told council members that more than 20 people were shot and killed in Cincinnati last year during domestic violence disputes.

The domestic violence rule for gun ownership is already a federal law, but the new local law would allow Cincinnati’s legal department to prosecute. Conviction of either gun laws would result in a first degree misdemeanor, resulting in up to one year in jail.

State lawsuit

Cincinnati is challenging a state law that prevents cities from enacting local gun legislation, something the Buckeye Firearms Association says will be a losing battle for the city.

"Cincinnati is following the lead of Columbus in ignoring settled law and previous court decisions," Dean Rieck, executive director of Buckeye Firearms Association, said in a Feb. 2 press release. "And just as Columbus' challenge will eventually be defeated, Cincinnati, too, will lose in court. Either lower courts will decide the matter or, once again, the Ohio Supreme Court will weigh in and remind Ohio's cities that they have no home rule authority on the matter of Second Amendment rights."

The lawsuit, filed in Hamilton County on Feb. 3, has been assigned to Judge Jennifer Branch.

“Because of inaction at the federal level and because of overreach at the state level, oftentimes our hands are tied,” Pureval said.

Read the ordinance below:

Ordinance by Madeline Fening on Scribd