Ohioans will no longer have to take an eight-hour training class or pass a background check to carry a concealed handgun starting Monday.
Anyone 21 or older can carry if they don’t have a felony on their record or a violent misdemeanor in the past three years. It’s a fundamental shift in Ohio’s handgun policy, and there’s speculation on both sides of the debate about what the change will mean for Ohio.
It’s difficult to get a complete view of who has been charged with gun possession violations because Ohio data is spread across 88 counties, which collect the information in different ways.
However, The Enquirer and USA TODAY Network Ohio bureau dug into court data to get some more concrete predictions about what life with permitless carry will look like. It’s impossible to know if there will be more homicides, but it is possible to know how many people might avoid a court case and who will be most affected by that.
Black Ohioans disproportionately faced concealed carry weapons charges
The answer is hundreds in Hamilton County alone, many of whom are young Black men. The smaller suburban Delaware County has likely dozens of cases a year, and about 60% of the cases involve Black people while Black residents make up only 11% of the county’s population.
Looking at cases that only involve offenses that will be legal under the new law, it is clear that hundreds of people will be spared the penalties, expense and inconvenience of a criminal charge. People charged with any other offense in the same case were not included in the tally.
After traffic stops or other contacts with police, an average of about nine people a week are charged within Hamilton County. That’s about 450 people a year who were arrested or cited who likely won’t be under the new law.
An analysis of the data showed few people convicted of these offenses go to jail, but they instead are placed on some sort of community control or probation. The weapons involved are usually surrendered and destroyed.
The data also showed a significant racial disparity. Over 80% of the cases involved Black people, compared to the population of Hamilton County, which is about 23% Black. More than half of the people who were charged were in their 20s.
But some think the law won’t completely protect young Black men who decide to carry a gun.
State Sen. Cecil Thomas, a Democrat from Cincinnati’s North Avondale neighborhood and former police officer, said, “I’ll tell any African American male: Don’t think that the mere fact you can go put a gun on that law enforcement won’t look at you differently than the average white man. If you’re in the grocery store and bend over to get something and someone sees it, they are going to call the manager.”
