COLUMBUS - Police must add the names of people facing protection orders to a list of individuals banned from owning guns, according to an executive order Gov. John Kasich signed Monday.
Right now, some police departments report those names to the database of individuals banned from purchasing guns. Others do not. These protection orders are filed to prevent harassment, stalking or threatening of a partner or the partner's child.
The loophole is a problem because federal law bans those people from buying or owning guns for the duration of the protection order.
Licensed gun sellers check National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, before selling someone a gun. If the database is incomplete, people who otherwise should be banned from buying a gun could still purchase one legally.
Kasich said Ohio has a "significant gap" between who should be reported to the list of people banned from having guns and those who actually are reported.
Kasich's NICS working group – which included officials from the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Ohio Supreme Court – found the loophole during its audit of how Ohio reports people to the database.
Across the state, 136 police departments said they had not submitted these names to the list of banned individuals. The reasons: police departments didn't have access to the database, didn't have enough staff and found reporting time-consuming, according to the 60-plus page report.
Kasich said local officials could eventually lose money if they don't comply. For now, they might face sanctions from the criminal database, such as losing access to it.
The database of banned individuals isn't pristine. State law requires courts to update the list of individuals barred from buying firearms at least once a week. But some courts went months or years without an update – without facing any repercussions, according to state audits.
The new audit found 49 percent of court clerks who responded said they had reported all records to the database banning people from obtaining firearms. That means many names aren't being reported.
Over three years, at least 90 Ohio courts have gone months without reporting people who are prohibited from owning a gun, according to an Enquirer investigation. Of those delinquent courts, 15 were common pleas courts, which handle the state's most serious offenses. Some courts didn't report names for more than a year.
Most court officials said they needed more training on what to report to the statewide database.
It's unlikely Kasich's latest executive order would have stopped the shooting on Cincinnati's Fountain Square on Sept. 6.
Earlier this month, Omar Santa Perez, 29, fatally shot three people and seriously injured two others before he was shot and killed by Cincinnati police. He did not appear to be the subject of any protection orders or warrants.
Santa's family had begged courts in Florida to force him into mental health treatment on at least two occasions between 2010 and 2012.
But he was still able to purchase a gun legally in Cincinnati years later. That's because Florida added individuals to the list of people banned from having guns only if they were involuntarily forced into treatment for more than 72 hours. The state has since passed more strict laws.
Ohio has not. Ohio has no "red flag" law that would allow relatives or police to remove temporarily guns from people who might be threats to themselves or others. Kasich said that legislation, which has seen little support in the GOP-controlled Legislature, might have helped in Cincinnati.
"What does that have to do with the Second Amendment?" asked Kasich, clearly frustrated with lawmakers' inaction. "The Second Amendment doesn't say that you should give a gun to someone who is emotionally unstable and may pose a threat to themselves or the family."
Gubernatorial candidates Mike DeWine, the Republican state attorney general, and Democrat Rich Cordray say they support a red flag law in Ohio. DeWine said at the Dayton debate that he would require constitutional protections to ensure due process rights aren't violated.
Still, Ohio's GOP-controlled Ohio House was more supportive of a "stand your ground" law than Kasich's red flag law. Kasich also proposed banning armor-piercing ammunition and knowingly purchasing a gun for someone banned from having one. But those ideas have seen little action among lawmakers.
Kasich also signed an executive order Monday to allow the NICS working group to continue.