Researcher: Ohio's concealed carry ban founded in racism

The fight to restore Ohioans' right to self-defense with a firearm has been going on longer than many realize. The following is taken from testimony offered by Clayton Cramer (www.claytoncramer.com) to the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee, in support of a concealed carry bill, on March 22, 1995.

Mr. Cramer's research on the origins of concealed carry bans are striking, and are something that every Ohioan, especially those who are minorities, should consider.

Summary: Concealed handgun license laws, outside of the formerly slave states, are a relatively recent phenomenon. The available evidence strongly suggests that racism has been the principal engine driving the development of these laws, until quite recently.

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"If the average law-abiding adult can be trusted with a gun, why do we have the laws we have today?"

It's a good question, because the answer is quite startling. Until the 20th century, laws that regulated or licensed the carrying of concealed weapons were rare, except for the states where slaves were held. In fact, before the Civil War, there was only one free state that prohibited or licensed concealed carry: Indiana.

By comparison, slave states were awash in laws that regulated the carrying of arms, concealed, or openly. Many of these laws applied only to blacks, and there is some reason to believe that even the laws that applied to whites were aimed at abolitionists.

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Later this month, the Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy will be publishing a paper of mine titled, "The Racist Roots of Gun Control." My second book also discusses in considerable detail how laws licensing the carrying of defensive weapons spread from the slave states to the free states. And these laws came North at roughly the same time that blacks migrated North in large numbers, and Mexicans crossed the border to escape the chaos of the Mexican Revolution.

In a few cases, we have direct and explicit statements that these laws were passed as a way to disarm feared minority groups, without having to openly admit that the laws would be enforced unequally. Florida Supreme Court Justice Buford's concurring opinion in Watson v. Stone (Fla. 1941) is perhaps the most blunt:

"I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. [T]he Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers ... and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied." [ Watson v. Stone , 4 So.2d 700, 703 (Fla. 1941).]

From examining the case law attached to the Ohio Constitution's guarantee of a right to keep and bear arms, it appears that in 1900, the only limit on the carrying of arms was that vagrants were prohibited from carrying weapons. But in the Hogan decision that year, the Ohio Supreme Court found that the citizens of Ohio possessed a constitutional right to carry a gun:
"for defense of self or property.… A man may carry a gun for any lawful purpose, for business or amusement, but he cannot go about with that or any other dangerous weapon to terrify and alarm a peaceful people." [ State v. Hogan , 63 Ohio St. 203, 81 Am. St. Rep. 626, 58 N.E. 572, 575 (1900).]

You could argue that a concealed weapon is especially protected under this reasoning, because the gun that can't be seen, can't, "terrify and alarm a peaceful people."
The earliest Ohio statute regulating or prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons appears to have been passed in 1917. This was at the heights of World War I paranoia in the United States. It is also about the time that California, my state, passed its first law regulating the carry of concealed weapons. California's statute also prohibited "resident aliens" from possessing handguns. Will anyone here be surprised if I tell them that nearly all of California's case law involved Hispanic last names? Will anyone here be surprised when I tell you that the first Ohio Supreme Court decision on Ohio's concealed weapon law (in 1920) involved a Mexican citizen named Nieto? Will anyone be horrified that Mr. Nieto was convicted of concealed carry of a handgun in his own bed? Will you be surprised that this conviction was upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court?

You then won't be surprised by the vigorous, intelligent, and acidic dissent written by Justice Wanamaker:

"I desire to give some special attention to some of the authorities cited, supreme court decisions from Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, and one or two inferior court decisions from New York, which are given in support of the doctrines upheld by this court. The southern states have very largely furnished the precedents. It is only necessary to observe that the race issue there has extremely intensified a decisive purpose to entirely disarm the negro, and this policy is evident upon reading the opinions." [ State v. Nieto , 101 Ohio St. 409, 430, 130 N.E. 663 (1920).] [emphasis added]

The history of why discretionary concealed weapon laws were written is racist to the core. How such laws are implemented in states such as California and New York is racist in its results.

Right now, large numbers of Americans are reluctant to travel into big cities at night, for fear of robbery or murder - and that fear is completely reasonable. Many women are afraid to go for a walk after dark, for fear of being raped. That fear is completely reasonable. There are many reasons why our cities have become such dangerous places, and I won't tell you that passing a non-discretionary permit law is going to suddenly revitalize American cities. But to the extent that it makes people willing to shop, play, and live in big cities, because they are no longer defenseless against criminal attack, there is a chance of reversing the decay of our urban centers.