Dispatch: Fewer permits, problems than were expected

An article published in the October 8, 2004 Columbus Dispatch examines the first six months of Ohio's new Concealed Handgun License (CHL) law. Written by veteran reporter and capitol observer Lee Leonard, the article compares reality to the fear-based predictions offered by members of the gun ban lobby less than a year ago, and takes a look ahead at potential future improvements to the law.

Leonard's article starts off like this:

Last week, the co-owner of a Lake County video-rental store received a wake-up call in the form of a "customer" who relieved his cash register of $304 by displaying a handgun.

Adam, a 32-year-old ex-Marine who didn’t want his last name used, now has posted a sign at Video Replay in Willoughby welcoming concealed-weapons permit holders — and he’s taking the training course to get his own permit.

"This guy was like the Prozac robber; he was so calm and cool," Adam said of the Sept. 27 robbery. "He pulled his shirt up and showed the gun. I said, ‘Sure thing, dude, you can have whatever you want.’ "

Adam said the offender, who is suspected of three other robberies in the area, had his gun stuffed so tightly into his belt that "if I had a gun under the cash drawer, I could have got the drop on him, and he’d be sitting in jail now."

Adam said a check-cashing establishment two doors from Video Replay has been robbed twice. He’s getting his permit because "it’s something I feel I should do, even if I’m not going to carry 24 hours a day."

When he gets his concealed-carry permit, Adam will be one of about 35,000 Ohio permit holders under the law that, by most accounts, has worked well in its first six months.

(for more on Adam's story from the original OFCC PAC story, click here)

More than 26,000 persons obtained CHLs in the first 3 months, and an estimated 12,000 did so over the "slow" summer, bringing the total number of law-abiding citizens now exercising their right to bear arms for self-defense in Ohio to around 38,000. More on the numbers game to follow.

The Dispatch article continues:

During a 10-year battle in the legislature, the air was filled with threats of "blood in the street" if concealed-carry permits were granted and promises that citizens would defend themselves and stop crimes in progress.

Looking back to April 8, when the law took effect, gun advocates can cite few instances in which permit holders stopped crimes. Law-enforcement officials have few examples of permit holders abusing their arms.

That we can cite any instances at all where CHL-holders stopped crime announces the success of the program. Isn't it the gun banners who like to argue that "it's worth it if we can save even one life?"

Indeed, while stories like Habib Howard's will make headlines, it will be almost impossible to quantify the number of lives saved by Ohio's CHL law.

A Dept. of Justice survey found that 40% of felons chose not to commit at least some crimes for fear their victims were armed, and 34% admitted having been scared off or shot at by armed victims. (James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous). So while we know it happens, there is absolutely no way to count the number of criminals that have already decided against attacking a person for fear they were armed.

Isn't it the anti-gun, anti-self-defense bunch who are always touting new gun control laws on the idea that it's worth it if it saves even one life?

So what difference does it make to them if the annual number of defensive gun uses is Gary Kleck's 2.5 million, or the NRA's "over 2 million", or even an ridiculously low 60,000 per year, as the anti-self-defense extremists claim?

Concealed carry reform saves lives. Hundreds of thousands of lives? Millions of lives? One life? To use the anti-self-defense extremists' own logic, it shouldn't much matter. From the article:

Robert A. Cornwell, executive director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association, said that although there have been few reports of permit holders stopping crimes in progress, "I think the safety of the people in their own minds has increased."

Cornwell said individuals have told him, "I feel safer knowing that I can protect myself."

On the other hand, as Leonard points out, Ohioans are now seeing for themselves that the ridiculous predictions of the gun banners have not come to pass:

Cornwell said predictions of bullets flying through the streets were exaggerations. "All the things we heard about how it was going to be the gunfight at the O.K. Corral just didn’t come true," he said.

But Lori O’Neill, vice president of the Cleveland chapter of the Million Mom March, said her group didn’t make such predictions. She finds it ironic that a higher percentage of the population has permits in rural counties than in urban areas, where crime is higher.

"It lends the sense that this (law) is not a realistic crimefighting mechanism," O’Neill said.

Toby Hoover, executive director of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, said Ohio’s experience is in line with other states. "Not too much is unexpected," she said.

Now that Ohio CHL is law, these gun ban extremists have been forced to engage in rhetorical revisionism.

In April 2004, Toby Hoover & other Ohio gun grabbers backed away from outrageous claims about what would happen if Ohio passed concealed carry, saying she and the rest of the gun ban lobby "never painted lurid pictures of bloody shootouts in the streets."

Quite a flip-flop from comments she made just the week before, telling Gannett News that "if we have more use of guns, then we're going to have more people who are injured and die."

Hoover debated OFCC's Chad Baus on WTOL Toledo minutes after learning House Bill 12 had been signed into law last January. To see video of Hoover repeating these warnings for Ohioans about concealed carry, click here (Windows Media).

So now they're reduced to claims that while the program isn't causes the mayhem they (now claim they never) predicted, it shouldn't have been passed because only a small percentage of citizens are taking advantage of it. In speaking of the number of licenses issued thus far, Hoover said:

"It shows again that we’ve got legislators who will cater to a few people."

(Leonard's article continues...) Although the number of permits requested is fewer than expected, Jim Irvine of Ohioans for Concealed Carry says that sheriffs and police officers are helping to make the law work.

"I think it’s working as well as it could be, considering how the law reads," Irvine said.

Irvine said his organization wants to make some changes in the next legislative session. Among them:

• Eliminating restaurants and day-care centers, among other facilities, from the list of establishments where guns are not allowed. Ohioans also should be able to drop off their children at school without disarming, he said.

• Allowing motorists and their passengers to keep their guns concealed when a police officer approaches, notifying the officer that they have a permit. Having the weapon in plain view of the officer presents too many problems, Irvine said.

Attorney General Jim Petro, who predicted there would be 100,000 permit holders after six months, estimates there are about 35,000.

"It’s remarkably low in the urban counties as a percentage of the population," he said.

The pro- and anti-gun forces have different explanations for the low number of applicants.

Irvine said a provision in the law allowing the news media to retrieve and publish the names of permit holders has had a chilling effect. "A number of women won’t get a permit because they don’t want their name and age in the paper," he said.

Before the law was implemented, Ohioans For Concealed Carry projected that as many as 100,000 applicants could be expected in the first 12 months. Attorney General Petro suggested that number could be reached in as little as six months.

But neither Mr. Petro nor OFCC took into consideration the possibility that a number of Ohio sheriffs (in the same urban counties Petro notes are lower than expected in terms of a percentage of the population) would intentionally not follow the law, or would make applications procedures so exceedingly difficult that only a handful of people may apply each week.

The number of issued licenses is now approaching 40,000, and this number does not include all the thousands of applications that are still being processed. It would be difficult to name one other government program that is so quickly utilized by the populous after coming online.

As OFCC has been reporting since the day the law took effect, restrictive appointment schedules, misapplication of the law, the unlawful addition of provisions by a few sheriffs not required by the General Assembly, and blatant obstinance on the part of sheriffs in a few of Ohio's most populous counties, have significantly reduced the number of applications able to be processed.

OFCC has NEVER claimed that more than 1-3% of the state's population" will ever obtain CHLs. We DID claim that allowing those citizens who choose to do so to exercise their right to bear arms for self-defense would benefit everyone by forcing crime rates down, just as it has in Michigan, where crime dropped 10.5% in the first two years after passage, while Ohio's rate climbed 5%.

When compared to certain other states which have recently passed laws, Ohio is way ahead of the curve anticipating and solving these problems.