Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

You Won’t Believe What Novelty Item Blue County Councilman Wants To Ban

Screenshot/WKYC-TV

A Cuyahoga County councilman wants to make it illegal to have a lighter that resembles a gun, and he’s using a decade-old accident to justify it.

Democratic Councilman Michael J. Houser Sr. claimed that novelty lighters that look like firearms posed a risk to public safety, according to Cleveland, Ohio,-area TV station WKYC TV, saying he wanted them banned. Houser named the measure he is introducing “The Tamir Rice Act,” invoking a 12-year-old fatally shot by a policeman.

“I can’t imagine if one of our youth or our children were walking down the street holding this,” Houser told WKYC while holding one of the lighters. “They do create pink guns, yellow guns, red guns, and so we don’t want the mistake to ever happen again, especially here in Cleveland and in Cuyahoga County. We can use the unfortunate incident of what happened to Tamir Rice as a way to save other lives.”

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“I don’t have $80 to buy every gun-shaped lighter off the shelves in Cuyahoga County,” Houser added. “If we can work with our Office of Consumer Affairs, we’re going to change the charter to make sure this is enforceable.”

Rice’s mother, Samaria Rice, announced her support of the legislation, as have other national figures, WKYC reported.

Rice was brandishing a pellet gun at an outdoor recreation center when he was mortally wounded with two gunshots to his abdomen on Nov. 22, 2014, by two police officers responding to multiple 911 calls about a man with a gun who was pointing it at people. Rice was taken to a hospital, where he died from the wounds the next day.

The police officers had been told that the unidentified man was pointing the gun at people, and believed that the 5-foot-7, 195-pound Rice was in his late teens when they arrived on the scene.

The officer was not charged over the shooting after experts determined his use of force was justified, but was later fired by the Cleveland Police Department for unrelated reasons.