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Weapon permit is dead giveaway
(by Dave Lange - June 04, 2009)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Weapon permit is dead giveaway
One of the victims of the armed robbers who busted into an after-hours "friendly game" of poker at a Solon business April 17 at least will be getting his concealed-carry permit back. Not that it did him much good.
After being scolded by a friendly reader recently that the local news media never report the many incidents in which legally concealed firearms are used to prevent criminal attacks, I was hoping to break the mold. Actually, we've been scouring the local police reports for such incidents since Ohio passed its concealed-carry law in 2002 but haven't found a single one.
In the course of our work, there's nothing that journalists like better than having a compelling story to tell.
To be sure, the story about four heavily armed and masked men gaining entry to a sequestered poker game just before a Friday midnight to steal $58,000 in cash and $20,000 in valuables was compelling. Imagine how much more interesting that story might have been if the dozen victims had been able to turn the tables on the four cold-blooded robbers, because they were legally armed with concealed weapons. It would be a story to die for.
OK, that's farfetched. But there were two heavily reported stories a couple years ago in Cleveland about people who did die at the hands of concealed-carry-permit holders.
That spring, an east-side man saved his own life by shooting a 15-year-old would-be robber to death on the sidewalk in front of his home. The shooter didn't get much sympathy from his own neighborhood, but he did get a lot of support from the media, including this writer. On the night of that July 4, a firefighter living on Cleveland's west side used one of his many guns to kill three people at his neighbor's house for the crime of shooting off fireworks. The firefighter resented the city's residency law, according to some rather unsympathetic reports.
Back to the Solon poker heist, it's not yet known whether any of the perpetrators had concealed-carry permits -- aside from the stolen one, which was nontransferable. But neither their rifles and shotguns, which do not require permits, nor their automatic pistols were concealed anyway. Guns were brazenly held to the heads of poker players as the thieves relieved them of about $30,000 in cash, along with $20,000 worth of jewelry, cell phones and wallets, one of which apparently contained the concealed-carry permit. The robbers grabbed another $28,000 from the business office, according to the report, which might be considered a lot of petty cash. Despite the permit, no concealed weapons were listed on the inventory of stolen goods.
Police are still piecing together the facts surrounding the crime, including how the masked marauders came upon the high-stakes "friendly game" to begin with and how they might have known that one of the players would be opening the locked door to take a smoke break.
Speaking of lucky breaks, despite the sudden enrichment, one suspect was not riding in high style when he was apprehended a week later in Lorain County. In fact, he was looking under the hood of a disabled car on the side of the road. It was there that police recovered the driver's license, a credit card and, yes, the concealed-carry permit belonging to one of the unfortunate poker players.
As we're told, concealed-carry permits are valuable possessions. But if one ends up in the wrong hands, somebody could shoot himself in the foot.
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