Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb (D) blamed the Sunday morning shooting that wounded nine people on constitutional carry and Ohio Republicans and called for the state legislature to give him the ability to enact more gun control.
The Cleveland shooting took place in the Warehouse District around 2:30 a.m. The shooter fled the scene after opening fire, as Breitbart News reported.
There were no fatalities.
Mayor Bibb commented on the incident, saying, “Last summer, the Republican-led legislature in Columbus passed Senate Bill 215,” NBC News showed.
He suggested an “uptick” in violence across the state from SB 215, the bill which took away the mandate that law-abiding citizens had to get a permit from the state government before carrying a gun for self-defense.
Bibb did not mention that CBS News listed Cleveland was the city with the tenth highest murder rate in America in 2019 — three years before constitutional carry took effect in Ohio.
But Bibb did blame Republicans, saying, “We need Republicans in Columbus to give us mayors more tools to get guns off our streets. I am sick and tired of getting these calls late at night. … I’m sick and tired of Republicans blaming us, as mayors, for violent crime.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.