DaytonDailyNews.com

COLUMBUS — — The Ohio Senate is expected to vote on a gun bill today that would strip cities of the power to regulate firearms issues and let permit holders conceal their weapons while traveling in vehicles.

The bill would negate more than 80 local gun ordinances in Dayton and 19 other communities, including assault weapons bans, local permit rules, and regulations that hold adults liable if kids get access to their firearms, said Toby Hoover of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence.

Dayton requires a firearm owner identification card and prohibits transferring ownership of any assault weapon.

The Ohio Municipal League opposes the bill because it infringes on cities and villages' constitutional rights to self-govern, said John Mahoney, deputy director. But Sen. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana and chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, said it's impractical for gun owners to have to keep up with a patchwork of local laws.

The bill marks the first major revisions to Ohio's two-year-old law allowing qualified adults to carry concealed firearms. In 2004-05, 67,984 permits were issued.

With Senate approval, the bill would go back to the House to consider Senate changes.

The bill cleared a major hurdle this week, when the Ohio Highway Patrol went from opposing it to being neutral. State law currently requires permit holders to have their weapons in plain sight when traveling in a vehicle. Gun-rights advocates argue it's safer to have the gun holstered or in a purse.

The patrol agreed to a new version that lets the owner carry it in a holster, purse, bag or glovebox in a vehicle and that increases the penalty if the owner, when stopped by police, fails to immediately inform police they have a weapon.