Ohio’s Republican-controlled Legislature is aiming to enact a Stand Your Ground gun law, despite pleas from urban government leaders that this would only compound the risks in inner-city neighborhoods where gun mayhem hits hardest. The measure, approved by the Ohio House and sent to the Senate, would eliminate the traditional requirement that a person prudently retreat in the face of danger before resorting to deadly force. It would make Ohio the latest of more than a score of other states following the foolhardy lead of Florida — where the first Stand Your Ground law has proved to be rife with risks to public safety and effective law enforcement.

Statehouse opponents pointed to the notorious gunshot slaying of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, in Florida last year as a clear warning of what could be in store for Ohio. But there is a dangerous disconnect between statehouse politicians’ allegiance to the gun lobby and the mortal reality in the most gun-threatened neighborhoods. “We’re talking about human life,” said Representative Alicia Reece, Democrat of Cincinnati. “We have to get it right.”

A recent report in The Times by John Eligon underscored the checkerboard pattern of gun deaths in the nation, where one city’s fatality average can be improving even as its poorest and toughest neighborhoods suffer a spike in gunshot violence. “There’s a sense of hopelessness on behalf of a lot of people,” said a resident who sleeps with a shotgun in a part of North St. Louis where there were 17 murders last year, up from five in 2009, while citywide homicides dropped nearly 60 percent.

This imbalance, which has grave consequences in the most hard-pressed black communities, is rarely acknowledged in the national gun debate. Statehouses too often are working to increase the numbers of armed civilians and their freedoms, as in Ohio, where professional police organizations strongly oppose Stand Your Ground.