Rogers: Mike DeWine 'disgraceful' for gambling with children's lives to placate gun lobby

Bexley resident Douglas Rogers is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former military police captain. He as a partner in the law firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease for more than 20 years. Rogers was a Moritz College of Law adjunct professor at Ohio State University from 2011-2016.

Gov. Mike DeWine showed that by signing House Bill 99 (reducing by 700 hours the required training for teachers to bring loaded guns into schools) he does not lead Ohio.  He bows to the extreme gun lobby and endangers Ohio schoolchildren in the process.

Gov. DeWine said, “This [amount of training] is a local choice, not mandated by the legislature nor by the government…. Each school board will determine what is best for their students, their staff and their community.”  Gov. DeWine knows better, because:

• The Ohio Constitution places responsibility for schools on the Ohio General Assembly, not on local school boards;

• As attorney general, he recommended the minimum training requirement for personnel carrying guns into schools should be 152 hours of training;

• Ohio law requires “uniform laws throughout the state [on] … carrying … of firearms,” not standards that vary in each location; and

• He said in signing House Bill 99, “It’d be his ‘preference,’ …  that guns stay with school resource officers [fully trained police officers].

Why didn’t Gov. DeWine veto House Bill 99 and argue for “his preference” – only school resource officers carrying guns in schools?  He did not veto House Bill 99, because he is not a leader, and he bows to the extreme gun lobby.

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When asked about the prospect of a teacher inadvertently shooting a student, Gov. DeWine said, “In life, we make choices and we don’t always know what the outcome is going to be.” But Gov. DeWine knows from the experts what the outcome of House Bill 99 will be: more gun violence.

Robert Meader, the officer who led the Columbus Division of Police Training Bureau from 2015 to 2020 testified, “In the last five years, there have been more than 90 publicly-reported incidents of armed adults [nationally] mishandling guns at school.”

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Also, the chiefs of police of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown said, “Significantly reducing firearm training for school personnel will make our schools less safe and increase the likelihood that a student will be unintentionally harmed or killed by a firearm in a school.” Gov. DeWine should listen to the experts and lead Ohio forward, not backward.

The recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, shows that reflexively ceding repressibility to local school officials rather than listening to state experts such as the Ohio Peace Office Training Commission leads to tragic results. Yet House Bill 99 limits what the Ohio Peace Office Training Commission/state can do by providing “the number of hours of [general] training shall not exceed 18 hours,” “the number of hours of [handgun] training shall not exceed two hours,” and “the number of hours of [additional] training shall not exceed two hours.”  Why limit what OPOTC could recommend?

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To receive a temporary driver license, the law requires 24 hours of classroom instruction, 50 hours of driving with a parent and at least 10 hours of night driving. It would be unsafe to cede driving standard-setting to local governments and provide that  (1) an individual only needs 22 hours of classroom instruction, with no driving time required, but say that (2) the local government could add required driving time to get a permit if it chose to. However, Gov. DeWine says school safety is a matter of local choice!

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It is disgraceful for Gov. DeWine to surrender to local governments on guns and gamble with the safety of Ohio schoolchildren — against the testimony of law enforcement —yet that is what he has done by signing House Bill 99.  Gov. DeWine is not a leader, but a follower of the extreme gun lobby.

Bexley resident Douglas Rogers is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former military police captain. He as a partner in the law firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease for more than 20 years. Rogers was a Moritz College of Law adjunct professor at Ohio State University from 2011-2016.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Opinion: Mike DeWine risks children's safety by giving in to gun lobby