The Ohio attorney general will form a Gun Crime Advisory Group "to deal with the huge problem of convicted felons who are using guns," he announced yesterday.
The decision was prompted in part by a series of stories in The Dispatch last month, "Target: Gun Violence," Attorney General Mike DeWine said.
"There are a relatively small number of individuals in the state who commit the vast majority of violent crimes," he said. "The key is to figure out how to identify them and get them off the streets."
No one has been named to the group, but DeWine said the emphasis will be on selecting "law-enforcement people who deal with the problem every day," particularly those in major urban areas, as well as "people who represent organizations like the NRA (National Rifle Association) and victims' advocates."
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When Michael T. Gravely shot and wounded two Columbus police officers who were battering down the door to a suspected drug house in 2008, it likely wasn't the first time he had illegally possessed a concealed weapon.
A gun charge against Gravely had been awaiting processing by Columbus police, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said. "You had a bottleneck with, I think, hundreds of gun cases that were going nowhere."
The discovery, police and prosecutors say, drove them to create the Columbus Police Division's gun unit, which seeks to make more gun cases stick in court. It also helped to further focus the city's law-enforcement efforts to reduce violence by going after gun offenders, both through aggressive policing on the streets and more-efficient prosecution in the courts.
"The old attitude oftentimes was, 'Let's get a gun off the street,'" said Assistant County Prosecutor Leigh A. Bayer, who now exclusively prosecutes gun cases as part of the unit. "The reality is, if you don't take the person who is committing these violent crimes off the street, he will have another gun by noon tomorrow.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/05/31/going-after-gunslingers.html?sid=101Forty-four percent of the known suspects in last year's homicides in Columbus had been arrested previously on weapons charges.
This doesn't surprise police, who point to weak state laws that allow repeat gun offenders to serve prison sentences as short as six months. The bad guys then return to the streets, get more guns and commit more crimes, sometimes with fatal results, police say.
Those who make their living on the streets carry guns for protection. It's as simple as that, say prison inmates interviewed by The Dispatch.
"I had a lot of run-ins with different people as far as being in front of the muzzle of a gun," said Carl Gordon, 24, a North Side man who is serving two years on weapons charges and has served time for gun violations twice before.
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