The PROponent Peoples Rights Organization 5 E. Long St., Suite 412; Columbus, OH 43215; (614) 268-0122 Volume 5 November, 1993 Number 11 VOTE! BE SURE TO VOTE! It may be an off-year election but your vote counts now more than ever. Whenever the turn-out at the polls is light it means the influence of PRO is just that much stronger. If our side turns out down to the last member and everyone one else just sits at home because there are no important offices up for grabs, it means our few votes have a much greater likelihood of being decisive. Some races like municipal judges can often be decided by a handful of votes. Also, don't be lulled into thinking that just because some major offices are not being voted on this time that the election is not important. Columbus City Council seats ARE important. These are the people who voted to take your guns. These are the people who could expand the list at any time to include ALL SEMI-AUTOS (They will of course be pointing out when they do this that they are only following Cleveland City Council and that the Cleveland ban was upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court). The only thing these politicians understand is raw political power. This means that every Columbusite within reach of this newsletter MUST vote. If you live elsewhere then get out and vote for YOUR pro-gun candidates. Talk up all candidates on our side ... even the ones just mildly leaning our way. Helping them win can only push them further toward our side. There is also an important issue on the Columbus ballot this time. It is a Columbus City Charter amendment to put an end to rampant run-for-election-then-resign shenanigans that keep putting appointed members on Council. These appointees are then "incumbents" by the time they finally run for election. The proposed change will force all appointees to run for office in the next general election. It will put an end to crap like Mr. John P. Kennedy being appointed to nearly a full term and then running roughshod over your Rights because he had no one to answer to except the political big-wigs who placed him in office. This Charter change is LONG OVERDUE! Municipal Judges are offices whose importance are far under-rated by voters. Often as not the voter will just ignore the races for judgeships. This only makes the influence of voting PRO members that much stronger. This is good. Justice in our community depends upon electing those will keep the scales of justice in good working order. We do not need them tilting to one side or the other. If you are ready to ignore the races for judges, you should never forget that when YOU are charged with a "gun crime" it is most likely one of these judges who will decide whether that shotgun you left in your trunk after hunting which was found by police when you were stopped after passing by a schoolyard is a "criminal tool" that will send you to jail or just an allowable exception under the law. If you think this is wild speculation you had better go back and re-read the old issues of the PROponent discussing the case of the kid in Mansfield whose buddy left a gun in his truck after hunting and what that judge did to him. Judges also hold the key to the rampant crime in our community that power-hungry politicians use as an excuse to take rights from the law-abiding. If judges choose to dismiss charges on rapists or gang-bangers and turn them back onto the streets for "probation" it just means that crime in our community goes up once more. If a judge takes some punk car thief and assigns him "wrap around" social services, pays for a $400/ month apartment, plus $400 a month for food and Rock and Roll records, plus two full time social workers, plus many more part time, at a total estimated cost to taxpayers of one quarter to half a million dollars; if a judge keeps the program going in spite of the kid repeatedly committing crimes and getting into trouble; if a judge ignores hundreds of kids who are just starting to get into trouble and spends all the money on one punk who has no intention of even trying to clean up his act; what future does life in our town have? If you want life in this city to have a future then you need to think about electing judges who can tell the difference between a kid that can still be reached and one that just needs to be removed from society. Judges also need to be able to tell the difference between criminals and people who make mistakes because they are just plain ignorant. Those judges endorsed by Citizens Against Crime have all voiced support for our firearm offender safety classes project. It's important, so get out and VOTE! REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES NIGHT... The August PRO meeting was designated Republican Candidates Night and a large group of candidates and their representatives took up PRO on their offer to speak at our meeting. The lead-off speaker was William Dawson who is running for re-election to the office of Municipal Clerk of Court. Mr. Dawson has served as Municipal Clerk of Court for Franklin County since 1986. Franklin County Court is the state's busiest court with over 350,000 cases per year. Mr. Dawson cites the smooth day-to-day operations of the Court as the record he stands on. Candidates for Municipal Judge included Lisa L. Sadler, Teresa Liston (represented by her husband), Nodine Miller, Dwane Maynard and John Leibold. Of the candidates for municipal judge, PRO members are doubtless most familiar with Teresa Liston. Since she spoke at our previous meeting where she gave a glowing report on the progress of our firearm safety classes for minor offenses proposed alternative to firearm confiscation and punishment, she was represented by her husband. He affirmed her strong commitment to even-handed justice in our court system. Lisa Sadler and Nodine Miller also appeared to be very strong candidates and were specifically asked their opinion of our safety class probation concept. They both voiced support of this plan that is intended to eliminate repeat offenses through education rather than punishment. Dwane Maynard seemed the most out of his element. He clearly did not know what to expect at a PRO meeting and seemed pleasantly surprised to find out that we are not the red-neck arm of the Klan that he feared. He kept repeating how much he had learned from us about the pro-gun side of these issues. He clearly seemed to be seeing the sense of our positions. John W. Leibold ... what can I say? The man is just a legend. He is the personal attorney of at least one PRO officer and we can assure you that you never want him any place but on your side. He is one kick-butt lawyer. He told the PRO meeting of his hunting days before polio placed him in a wheelchair. He gave a quiet speech, but with a strength that makes us feel certain that John Leibold on the bench will mean a strong personality and no-nonsense justice. Candidates for City Council Amy Salerno, Rick Whitehouse, Ron Sams (represented by his son) finished our Candidates Night. Rick Whitehouse is strongly anti-crime. He is ready to attack the crime problem by attacking the criminal problem. He supports tougher penalties for criminals and not laws directed at the law-abiding gun owner. With the City Council poised to raise water rates, add trash collection fees and the like, Rick Whitehouse says cut spending first. We agree. Ron Sams was represented by his son and all we can say is that if he is half the man his son described we should all be impressed. Mr. Sams was described through a variety of hunting stories, and examples of strong character. We only wish we could have judged for ourselves. Finally, Amy Salerno came and spoke to our meeting once more. This woman is never too busy to get things done. She never stops pushing to make things right. In the opinion of this writer and many others at the meeting Amy is a breath of fresh air for Columbus City Council. Let me tell you just how impressive she is: I was out in a neighborhood near mine where some people I know live who are life-long Democrats. What did I see, but an AMY SALERNO sign in their front yard! Sure City Council is supposed to be a non-partisan race, nevertheless, I was impressed. ____________________________________________________________ "You have the God-given right to kick the Government around, don't hesitate to do so." Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, September, 11, 1968 ____________________________________________________________ AN ALTERNATIVE TO TRUTH AND MORALITY... They call themselves "alternative" newspapers. They seem to be the latest craze to hit Columbus. These free downtown tabloids are proliferating lately like fleas on a dog. Presently we have the mainstays: The Other Paper, Columbus Alive!, Columbus Guardian, and the cartoon paper Hoot as well as numerous smaller freebies. Just how this town has enough kinky people advertising for sex in "personals" to keep this many "politically correct" papers afloat is beyond me, but so far it seems to be working. Of course Columbus Alive did reorganize in bankruptcy court before the Guardian came to town and hired away much of their staff (who swore they would never abandon ship ... then did). The Guardian also signed on Hoot editor-publisher Irv Oslin as a columnist. This fact gives you a good idea of the tone the Guardian is trying to set. Remember good old Irv who called the Waco deaths of men women and children "the best thing that has happened to this country's gene pool in ages." Irv said the babies HAD to be killed because their parents were defective and they would therefore grow up to be conservative "inbred violence-prone imbeciles." However, Irv does tell Columbus what is "hip" from his new platform high atop Columbus' most monied "alternative." "Hip" to Irv is any remnant activity from the 60's ... like the good old days when Irv went to prison for refusing induction into the military. A hot time to Irv (by his own words) is a shindig like the Short North street fair with lots of pot smoking and urinating in public. This is sure my idea of a new moral voice for our community ... NOT. One can only wonder if these "alternative" writers drive old VW Microbuses spray painted with peace signs and follow the Grateful Dead from concert to concert. While the alternative voices of Cowtown are FOR drugs, sex and rock and roll, there are also a number of things they adamantly oppose. These include the Ku Klux Klan, firearms and the Bill of Rights. A case in point is the recent Oct 6 Alive! piece by Jeff Winbush. He froths at the mouth over a few skinheads exercising their legal rights to express themselves and uses the issue as an excuse to call for the complete overthrow of our American form of government. "I don't care about violating the Klan's constitutional rights. Let the ACLU and First Amendment groupies [I guess he means us!] agonize over the threat to democracy by denying bigots a forum to spread their poison in public," he said. As Jeff spews hate, he keeps bringing up analogies to Nazi Germany. He invokes the name of Goebbels and Hitler to denounce the Klan rally but any clear thinking individual can easily see that it is the "alternative" journalists of Columbus that are today's Hitler Youth. These people are exceptionally dangerous. Even the left-leaning ACLU defends the Klan's right to speak and the liberal NAACP said to just ignore the rally. These journalists are dangerous not only because they have a media (OK, small, but bigger than us) platform but also because they all pretend to be educated and liberal. They are not liberal. They are all state-ists. At base they all believe that an all-powerful government should be the final arbiter of everyone's freedom. They all ascribe to the fundamental principles that underlie Fascism, Communism, and Socialism. They believe in the control of the many by the few ... hoping thusly to gain an advantage for the particular group of which they consider themselves to be members. It's all just a rehash of the ideas so prevalent in Germany of the 30's. The outrageous antics and obvious ignorance expressed by these "journalists" who are pretending to be "liberals" has given liberalism such a bad name that I have noticed they now use a new label to fool that segment of the public which is mildly sympathetic but is now starting to catch on to what these people really are. Now they call themselves "progressives." Hey, who could be against progress. Right? I'm sure they refer here to the "progressive" control of your life by Big Brother. One of the more recent Guardian outrageous antics was a story by Andrea Simakis in the August 18 issue called Street Steel. I won't bore you with the gory details of this story or my letter to the editor (which they printed except for my attack on Simakis' intelligence) but let me give you a couple of quotes to get the big city flavor: A photo of a BB gun had the caption: "A good gun to die by/The AIR 17 by Crossman is a BB gun with looks that kill." In confirmation of my assertion that journalists and school administrators are the only two professions on the planet that cannot tell if a kid has an UZI stuffed in his pants, Simakis writes: "Unreliable and prone to lock up, these boxy steel stepchildren to weapons developed for guerrilla warfare [ed. TEK-9s] are surprisingly easy to conceal - some small-time gangsters wear them in string holsters that weirdly resemble cats cradles." But Simakis' New York style tricks just don't seem to pass muster here in Cowtown. Not only did PRO not let her gun story go unchallenged, but she also got caught recycling an old phone sex story she did for the Village Voice. It seems she copied the old story nearly word for word to give the impression the interviews were in Columbus not New York City. OSU journalism professor Schwartz said the action "borders on fraud against the public" and Professor Izard of the Ohio University School of Journalism called the story, "ethically dishonest." I'm sure Simakis just considers her action "alternative" journalism. That is to say, an alternative to truth and morality. And finally, here is what Paul Harvey calls "the rest of the story." It is the paragraph Guardian editors censored from our letter to the editor on the Street Steel Story: "As a plaintiff in the suit that failed to overturn the Columbus gun ban, I used to have an "assault weapon" and Simakis explains how easy it is for me to get another and turn to a life of crime. I just take all three and one half feet of ugly cold military steel firearm and put it in a 'cats cradle' holster. Then I just dress myself in my favorite designer tarpaulin and my gun is 'surprisingly easy to conceal.' But I won't need to shoot anyone with it because it will be far more ugly than the AIR 17 BB gun 'with looks that kill' so I will just pull back the tarp and agents, cops and ER nurses will drop like flies. Is Andrea any relative of the guy who burglarized the Chief's house?" ____________________________________________________________ "The principles of socialism, communism and fascism are anti- individualistic. They deny that the individual has the right to live his own life as he chooses. They insist that the individual's primary obligation is to serve the collective, whether the collective be called 'society' or 'the State' or 'the fatherland' or 'the public interest'." Brown, Keating, Mellinger, Post, Smith & Tudor, The Incredible Bread Machine, World Research Inc.; 1974 ____________________________________________________________ WEAVER SLAPPED... A year ago August, the forces of good changed the rules of engagement, and attacked a homestead in Colorado. In the first minutes of the hostile engagement, a teen-age boy was shot and killed. A federal marshall was also killed. During the ensuing stand-off, a mother was killed by a federal sharpshooter. Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris were found innocent of an array of charges ranging from murder to conspiracy last July. Weaver still faced weapons charges that resulted in the raid that killed his wife and son. On October 18, 1993, Weaver was found guilty on failing to appear on a federal weapons charge stemming from 1991. His sentence is 18 months in prison and a $10,000 fine. Gerry Spence, Weaver's chief council, said that "Weaver's 14 months already served, along with good behavior, would likely have him out of prison by the end of the year." Weaver was originally charged with selling sawed-off shotguns that were a quarter-of-an-inch under the eighteen inch requirement for barrel length. Many felt that this was a trumped-up charge due to Weaver's refusal to aid the authorities in an investigation of a white supremacist group. Shortly after his refusal to help in the investigation, the firearm violations were brought forth. What is it when the forces of good, law enforcement, change the rules of engagement so they get to shoot on sight, wear cammies, paint their faces and don't have to show a warrant? They then call in federal troops. There were even rumors that a foreign country's elite commando force was ready to go in if our federal forces couldn't handle two men, a woman and several teen-age children. Can anybody say New World Order? In the New World Order, armed soldiers from Ireland, Belgium, Russia, Columbia and Venezuela will "police" the United States. They will have taken an oath to serve the United Nations. Former U.S.A. troops will be used in Argentina, Australia and the Central Balkans as a "police" force. They also will have taken an oath to serve the UN. As seen in Colorado and Texas, federal law-enforcement is more and more calling for armed troopers to back-up and enforce their botched raids on U.S. citizens. This is supposed to be illegal according to our form of government. They also have used tanks and gas against innocent civilians that had not even been served with a search warrant or an arrest warrant. Seeing our leaders rush toward socialism with our health care and welfare systems, and their continued onslaught on our Second Amendment RIGHTS, and their continued references to a new world order, it is little wonder that they have to bring in foreign troops to quell citizen unrest. Hopefully, with Weaver's loss of his wife and son, and his 14 months already spent in prison, he will soon be free to return to his mountain retreat and pick up the shattered remnants of his life. _________________________________________________________________ The PROponent is published by: Peoples Rights Organization; 5 E. Long St., Suite 412; Columbus, OH 43215; Tel (614) 268-0122 Fax (614) 275-0092 EMAIL: 73427.1615@compuserve.com Richard Hale, Chairman; Ron Herman, Vice Chairman Dennis Walker, Secretary; Bill Johnson, Treasurer Editors: Dennis Walker and Frank Jacoby Contributions, either written or financial are gladly accepted. Anyone wishing to reprint all or part of an article from the PROponent may do so. Please mention the PROponent and the issue that the article was in, and send a copy of your publication to our PRO office. (We like to know what your organization is doing too.) Also, PRO will exchange newsletters with any pro-gun, pro-rights, pro-hunting, etc. group to further grass-roots communication. Put us on your newsletter mailing list and we will put your club on ours. PRO general meetings are held the third Tuesday of every month at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, W. Broad St. Columbus, Ohio. _________________________________________________________________ (These endorsements appeared as a pull-out in this issue) CITIZENS AGAINST CRIME Citizens Against Crime is the political action committee of the Peoples Right's Organization. Through the PAC, PRO is able to aid and influence candidates and elected representatives and judges when they run for office. This year, as in years past, we invited the Democratic candidates to speak before the membership of PRO. They declined. Only one of them showed enough interest to ask that a questionnaire be sent to her. We did so, and she sent it back to us. As a result of her answers, Citizens Against Crime is unable to endorse either candidate for the position of City Attorney for Columbus. Those running are Shirley Cochran, democrat, and Ron O'Brien, republican incumbent. O'Brien did not send his questionnaire back to us. Citizens Against Crime endorses the following: Columbus City Council Amy Salerno Richard A. Whitehouse Ron Sams Franklin County Municipal Court Teresa L. Liston Dwayne Maynard John W. Liebold Nodine Miller Lisa A. Sadler Clerk of Courts for Franklin County William Dawson Columbus City Attorney No candidate endorsed. Board of Education Bill Buckel ISSUE 5 YES In this election on November 2, 1993, there are a number of issues including two proposed city Charter amendments for Columbus. Citizens Against Crime strongly endorses the passage of Issue 5. "Shall the Charter of the City of Columbus be revised by amending Section 5, to provide that if a City Council member should die, resign, or be removed from office during the term of office, the successor shall be appointed by Council to serve until the first day of January following the next regular municipal election?" This forces appointed City Council members to run for office in the next municipal election rather than finishing out the unexpired term of the former member. Please take this sheet to the polls with you on election day. (Reverse side of endorsement pull-out) CITIZENS AGAINST CRIME Endorsements for the Lancaster, Ohio Area Lancaster City Council President Kevin Groves Lancaster City Council Steve Boch Tim Welker Robert Michael Kalish Lancaster Council at Large David Smalley Municipal Judge of Fairfield County Steven Williams Burn Township Trustee Jerry Miller Violet Township Trustee Terry Dunlap Sr. Citizens Against Crime working with the Peoples Rights Organization of Central Ohio (PRO-CENTRAL chapter) wishes to endorse the above candidates running for election in the Lancaster - Fairfield county area. Members of PRO-CENTRAL and PRO members living in that area should use this side of our endorsement pull-out for guidance. You may take this sheet with you into the voting booth.