From: [t--ml--g] at [infinet.com] (Tom Wemlinger) Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns Subject: [NEWS] Sheriff Won't OK Tax-Stamp Weapons Date: 4 Sep 1995 19:36:15 GMT From the Columbus (OH) Dispatch, May 24, 1995: SHERIFF WON'T OK TAX-STAMP WEAPONS (By Mary Stephens, Dispatch Staff Reporter) Gun fanciers in Franklin County might find it tough to legally buy the kinds of weapons that make the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms particularly nervous. Several local police authorities refuse to grant their permission for citizens to own the sorts of automatic or military weapons covered by the National Firearms Act. Under a 1930s federal law, the transfer of such weapons is subject to a tax, and the form owners must fill out - called a tax stamp - requires the approval of the chief law enforcement officer of the owner's area. "I don't sign 'em," Franklin County Sheriff Jim Karnes said of such requests. "I don't want them to have them." Allowing such destructive and valuable guns in private homes, where they could more easily be stolen, is an invitation to disaster, Karnes said. "I don't need any high-powered weapons in private hands," he said. "I don't think there's a need for them. I tell people, 'Don't start off by telling me it's your constitutional right to have them. Convince me you need them,'" Karnes said. So far, no one has. Karnes said he gets two or three such requests every year and turns them down. In response to inquiries about tax stamp policy, made through a spokeswoman, Columbus Police Chief James Jackson did not clearly indicate whether he has a policy or has received such requests. Grove City Police Chief Jim McKean agrees with Karnes. "I have never approved one," McKean said of the one or two requests per year he gets to approve tax stamps for automatic weapons. "I just philosophically don't approve of that, mainly for safety reasons," he said. Like Karnes, McKean fears automatic or other heavy-duty military weapons could wind up in criminals' hands if they are kept in private homes. Last year, McKean turned down a man's request to buy an operational World War II-era German submachine gun. Dublin Police Chief Ron Farrell hasn't been asked to sign a tax stamp since before he came to Dublin in the late 1980s, but he's not so surer he would turn one down. He said he generally approved them in Lebanon, Ohio, where he was chief before. "There are some genuine collectors that want them for very sincere reasons," Farrell said. "I never remember that causing any kind of problem." Chris Cline, a Dublin attorney and marksman, doesn't own any fully automatic weapons, but sympathizes with those who might want to own them. Many gun laws, including those that define and restrict "assault weapons," are based more on emotion and politics than logic and fairness, Cline said. Some guns are banned or restricted simply because of their menacing-looking features, while other, more powerful weapons, "with a nice, pretty wooden stock" are left out of such legislation, he said. Perhaps Franklin County's most visible gun-control advocate is County Commissioner Dewey Stokes, who also is national president of the Fraternal Order of Police and, in that role, frequently speaks in favor of gun control. Stokes, like many pro-gun-control police officers, took personal offense at a controversial National Rifle Association advertisement that described government officials "with badges" as jackbooted thugs. "They were talking about all of us - the Columbus police, Franklin Township, anybody that wears a badge," Stokes said. Stokes dismisses those who say that FOP members generally oppose gun control and are misrepresented by the organization's leaders. He points to a 1991 telephone poll of FOP members in which 71 percent said they strongly favor a seven-day waiting period for buying guns, and a similar percentage favored banning assault weapons. Also, members at national Fraternal Order of Police conventions in 1993, 1991 and 1989 voted in favor of a waiting period and assault weapons ban.