Ohio lawmakers continue to insist they are acting “to protect children,” yet their legislative priorities tell a very different story.
Instead of addressing the actual, documented leading cause of death for children in our state, gun violence, they are spending their time restricting drag performances.
It’s a choice rooted not in child safety, but in ideology and distraction.
Firearms is the number one killer of children and teens in the United States, surpassing car crashes, and cancer.
This is not abstract data. It is a public‑health crisis that continues to escalate, with youth firearm suicide rates rising sharply and disproportionately affecting children of color.
Organizations like Brady and End Family Fire have documented the scale of the problem: millions of children live in homes with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm, and “family fire” — shootings involving an improperly stored gun in the home — kills or injures children every day.
Research shows that safe storage alone can reduce unintentional shootings and suicides among children by significant margins.
These are preventable deaths. And yet, Ohio’s legislative agenda continues to ignore them.
I don’t come to this issue as an outsider.
My father was murdered, and that loss carved a permanent fault line through my life.
People talk about “healing” as if grief is a wound that eventually closes, but that’s not how gun violence works. The trauma settles in your bones. It changes the way you move through the world.
Holidays are never the same after you lose a parent to violence. There’s always an empty seat at the table, a silence where a voice should be, a moment when everyone looks around and feels the absence even if no one says it out loud.
The ripple effects don’t fade… they compound. Every birthday, every milestone, every family gathering becomes a reminder of what was taken.
That’s the part policymakers never acknowledge.
When they refuse to address gun violence, they’re not just ignoring statistics, they’re ignoring families like mine who live with the consequences forever and instead they would rather enable the gun violence epidemic.
And the impact isn’t only emotional. It’s financial.
A study commissioned by the City of Columbus and conducted by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform found that gun violence costs the city hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
Each shooting triggers expenses across police response, EMS, investigations, courts, incarceration, and long‑term medical care. Those costs don’t disappear — they land squarely on the public.
Gun violence steals lives, shatters families, and drains public resources. And yet, instead of addressing the crisis that is killing our children and costing taxpayers a staggering amount of money, lawmakers are busy legislating drag shows.
There is no credible evidence that drag performances harm children. But there is extensive evidence that guns do.
The decision to legislate drag while loosening gun restrictions is not about safety — it’s about culture‑war politics designed to inflame, divide, and distract.
When lawmakers choose symbolic battles over real solutions, children pay the price.
Despite political rhetoric, the public is not confused about what works. National surveys consistently show that a strong majority of Americans, including gun owners, believe that gun safety laws save lives.
And the research backs them up. Securely storing firearms — locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition — is a proven method to prevent unintentional shootings, youth suicides, and school shootings.
Extreme Risk Protection Orders, also known as red‑flag laws, allow families or law enforcement to temporarily remove firearms from someone in crisis.
Studies show that Extreme Risk Protection Orders reduce suicides overall and are especially effective when clinicians or family members can petition for the order.
These are real, measurable interventions that save children’s lives.
If Ohio lawmakers were serious about protecting children, they would pass and promote safe‑storage requirements, expand access to Extreme Risk Protection Orders, invest in community‑based violence prevention, support mental‑health services, and strengthen — not weaken — gun safety laws. Instead, they are legislating drag shows.
Ohio doesn’t have a drag problem. Drag is not harming children. Drag is not killing children.
Drag is not sending families into lifelong grief or costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Gun violence is the leading child‑safety crisis in this state and across the country.
The data is clear. The solutions exist. The public supports them. And families like mine live with the consequences when lawmakers choose ideology over evidence.
Unsecured guns are killing Ohio kids and we know how to stop it.
If Ohio truly wants to protect children, it must stop targeting drag performers and start addressing the bullets that are killing our kids.
This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.
