OH-02 Phil Heimlich: His 2nd Amendment Shot May Aid Jean Schmidt

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Former Hamilton County Commissioner Phil Heimlich, a Republican who hopes to topple U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt in the OH-02 GOP primary next March, is out with a statement saying he's a big supporter of gun rights. Heimlich pledged to support a House bill intended to make all 50 states recognize each other's concealed carry laws. But he drew attention to Schmidt: The Daily Bellwether found the Clermont County congresswoman has been working to get the same measure through Congress.

Here's Heimlich:

"Our nation is in need of a uniform policy regarding the recognition of state concealed carry laws. The Stearns/Boucher Right-To-Carry Reciprocity Bill would help solve the problem. Introduced n the U.S. House by Representatives Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Rich Boucher (D-Va.) . . . the bill would allow any person with a valid carrying permit issued by a state to carry a concealed firearm in any state."

But Schmidt was much faster on the draw. She is one of the two Ohioans among the 77 co-sponsors of the bill. The other Ohio co-sponsor is U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Oh-01. Schmidt signed up to back the NRA-supported measure on March 15.

Schmidt holds a concealed carry permit in Ohio, as does Heimlich. So he does not trump her as a Second Amendment supporter, and at most is playing catch up. In other words, Heimlich says he publicly holds the same position as Schmidt about reciprocity among the states. And she can respond: I have been trying to get that through the House for much of this year. Indeed, Heimlich almost seems to give Schmidt a kudo in his statement supporting Stearns/Boucher.

"Those of us who support the Second Amendment understand the need for the Stearns/Boucher bill to become law. In Congress, I will fight for the rights of gun owners, and work to make our Second Amendment rights stronger through common sense legislation like Stearns/Boucher."

The full-text of Heimlich's statement is here. At most, his remarks demonstrate to 2nd Congressional District Republicans that he's a gun rights supporter. That is important in a semi-rural district where NRA support is critical, even for Democrats such as Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, whose native county, Scioto, is within OH-02.

Gun-Totin' Mike Huckabee: Fires A (Verbal) Shot At Katie Couric

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has a concealed carry permit, and he's been cautious about saying much about when and where he's packin.' But the Republican presidential candidate makes no bones about his support of the Second Amendment, and has now taken a swipe at CBS anchor Katie Couric, demonstrating his bona fides to the pro-gun voting bloc. He also seems to have gotten in a dig at Couric for allegedly anti-Southern bias.

To do it, though, Huckabee had to dredge up a tale from 1998 when Couric worked for NBC's Today show. His real target, though, may have been Rudy Giuliani, that New York Yankee who led a city with some of the nation's toughest gun laws.

So far, hardly anyone has noticed Huckabee wrote on his blog late Friday about the day Couric interviewed him about a middle school shooting that killed a teacher and four students near Jonesboro, Ark. Huckabee said he defended the South against Kouric's down on Dixie attitude.

''She intimated that mass murder of school campuses seemed to be confined to schools in the Deep South, where there existed a 'culture of guns.' I assured her that yes hunting and ownership of firearms were Southern traditions. At the same time, the murder of innocent schoolchildren was most certainly not and such violence was inexplicable regardless of one's geography."

But Couric, according to Huckabee, seemed determined to humble the South. And, he said, he would not let her get away with that.

"When she continued to press, looking for some validation of her view that these shootings were in some way connected to the South, I firmly reminded her that Colin Ferguson boarded a train in New York and coldly killed 27 people before finally being subdued. That event occurred in New York where the gun laws and among the toughest in the country, and where gun ownership is so much lower than in the South."

Huckabee went on to say he is an NRA member. His blog entry is HERE.

As a conservative political performance it was boffo. In one shot, he accomplished four things. He told the world he owned guns and supported gun rights. He ripped the liberal news media. He portrayed himself as someone who would stick up for Southerners -- always a good move in a region that can still bristle over real or imagined Yankee slights. And he managed to say something that could be interpreted as unflattering about New York, implying that it was more liberal than most places.

Now, isn't there a New Yorker running for president against Huckabee, a New Yorker who is leading in all polls. That's right -- Rudy Giuliani, the one-time mayor of the city ''where gun laws are among the toughest in the country."

Ken Blackwell In Towhall: Stretching The Truth?

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Ohio's former Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, fresh off his loss in the race for governor, has been refashioning himself as a conservative Townhall.com pundit. He tells an interesting story this week about black southerners in small Louisiana towns who armed themselves and refused to be cowed by the Klan. He writes, "Unfortunately, these freedom fighters are seldom mentioned as an important part of African-American history."

Oh, really?

Google "Deacons For Defense Louisiana." Nearly 39,000 hits appear, including reviews and background about a MOVIE that tells the story of Blackwell's "seldom mentioned freedom fighters." There are even schedules for dates the movie was aired on national television, and reviews published about the film are easily found. In fact, the movie's cast, which included actor Ossie Davis, won several awards.

The Deacons also are the subject of a Lance Hill book, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, which Blackwell mentions and cites.

There is a Wikipedia entry about the Deacons for Defense. Interestingly, Wikipedia cites an article in The Nation, a liberal publication that wrote about the group's existence before Blackwell.

And Gun Owners of America's Larry Platt penned a piece about the Deacons in August 2004. At the time, Platt said it was a "little known" organization, a phrase that pre-dates Blackwell's use of "seldom mentioned" by more than two years.

Wait, there's more. The FBI files about the Deacons are ONLINE and offered for sale.

Blackwell's column about the Deacons is HERE, and he makes the argument that because they were armed, and were not afraid to use those guns, they were able to protect themselves, their families and property from KKK white supremacists. No dispute on that.

But his logic is a little fuzzy. Though Blackwell contends hardly anybody knows about these gun-toting freedom fighters, he also says the Deacons had signficiant impact on the progress of civil rights in the segregated South.

Here's what Blackwell wrote: "Their actions in the mid-1960s had perhaps more impact on the progress of civil rights than did President Eisenhower's 1957 dispatching of troops to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas."

UPDATE: 12:21 p.m. Blackwell's column drew THIS thoughtful review on KingsRightSite. And Blackwell's is reprinted in full at RightAngleBlog where the headline notes the role of the the Second Amendment in the civil rights movement. Blackwell is slammed on BuckeyeStateBlog over his contention in the column that the Brady law is racist. Blackwell may be out of office, but he sure hasn't lost his edge as a political provacateur -- talk about packing heat.