Thread: Ohio Precedent?
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Old September 28, 2010, 05:16 PM   #7
Aguila Blanca
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Join Date: September 25, 2008
Location: CONUS
Posts: 18,434
Quote:
Originally Posted by zukiphile
Quote:
The case that directly led to Ohio adopting a concealed carry law was a case that went to the Ohio Supreme Court in which they specifically ruled that, because the state constitution guarantees a RKBA and because the legislature had prohibited concealed carry, open carry MUST be allowed under the (state) constitution.
That isn't really how it unfolded. Klein didn't change much. Open carry still has lots of the same problems in Ohio that it does in other states.

What changed the landscape in Ohio was the political popularity of concealed carry, and a governor who promised to sign a CCW bill "if it crosses my desk" killing it several times, then being muscled into submission by the General assembly and his own party.

Klein was not a Heller-like moment.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is exactly how it unfolded. It took a few years, but Ohio's concealed carry law was the result of a succession of open carry rallies that were staged specifically with the intention of making the lawmakers sufficiently nervous about seeing a lot of folks with guns out in public, leading them to pass a law that allowed concealing said guns.

Those open carry demonstrations would not have been possible prior to the Klein v. Leis decision, because prior to that the police in Ohio operated on the theory that open carry was illegal, and they arrested people for it.

For Ohioans, Klein was indeed a watershed event/case, because it clearly established the (state) constitutional RIGHT to bear arms was a fundamental right, and a right that while subject to regulation could not be completely banned by legislative fiat.
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