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Mr. Chairman:

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to address you today. In brief, my remarks today are intended to cover three points:

Point 1. Non-Discretionary concealed handgun license laws are sometimes an aid to public safety, and from the available evidence, not a threat.

Point 2. 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.

Point 3. Self-defense is a basic human right, guaranteed by the Ohio Constitution. Common sense alone tells us how basic of a right self-defense is; if you don't have the right to defend yourself from murder, the rest of your human rights are irrelevant. Adopting a non-discretionary concealed handgun license law will recognize that basic human right.

In spite of considerable effort that has been put into developing less lethal self-defense devices, the most effective tool for self-defense against sudden attack remains the handgun. This is the reason that while police departments routinely issue pepper spray or tear gas to their officers, they also issue them a handgun - because they know that the threat of death is the surest way to discourage criminal attack, and if the threat isn't enough, a gun is the surest way to stop a criminal attack.

I come to you today asking you to follow the lead of the 14 other states that have adopted such laws. Make it possible for law-abiding adults to use the most effective self-defense tool when they leave their homes. Furthermore, I am asking you to pass a law that defines quite precisely who is eligible for a permit, and takes away nearly all discretion on the part of public officials in deciding whether to issue a permit. Radical? Crazy? Dangerous? Well, yes, that was my first reaction to these sort of laws. Let me tell you a little about how I came to write, with David Kopel, the paper on concealed weapon permit laws that I believe each of you have received.

I was writing my second book - a scholarly history of how the courts have interpreted both the Second Amendment and the similar guarantees contained in most state constitutions. When I discovered these non-discretionary concealed handgun license laws in 1989, I was curious what would happen. While I believed then that concealed handgun licenses could be safely issued more liberally than they were, even I believed that making permits too easily available would lead to chaos, as traffic accidents, insults, and minor disputes would escalate to gunfire and bloodshed.

So I decided to gather data about all these new laws, and see what happened. Would these non-discretionary permit laws result in wanton, pointless bloodshed? In particular, what would happen to murder rates? The paper you have received will be published next month in the Tennessee Law Review. It shows that the worst fears of many people (myself included) turned out to be incorrect. In the states that adopted these non-discretionary permit issuance laws, there has been no increase in murder rates, with the exception of Virginia - but Virginia is the one state where large numbers of judges have ignored clear legislative intent, and refused to issue permits.

In a few states, murder rates have fallen since these new laws took effect. In Florida, the drop in murder rates has been dramatic - and the drop started the very first year of the new law - and has continued every since. The most detailed examination of licensees, in Florida, has found that even the few cases where licensees broke any laws, these were usually very minor technical or unintentional violations - not the tragic crimes that were predicted.

What makes these results so impressive is how many people have been licensed to carry under these new laws. In Oregon, 2% of the adults in the state are now licensed to carry. (In spite of the rhetoric from opponents of concealed carry who try to characterize it as an pathological expression of masculinity, about 25% of the applicants in Oregon are women. Considering how common rape is in the United States, the surprise isn't that 25% of Oregonian applicants are women - the surprise is that the percentage is so low.) In the states for which data is available, the percentage of the population with permits is in the range 1-4%.

So... with so many licensed to carry handguns, and with abundant evidence that it does no harm, and in some cases, appears to have done some real good in reducing murder rates, what does this tell us? What it tells me is that the sort of person who qualifies for a concealed handgun permit isn't as stupid or hot-tempered as many people - myself included - assumed.

It is conventional wisdom that nice, ordinary, sensible people with a gun just fly off the handle and commit murder - the archetypal crime of passion. Yet quite a number of studies that have been done over the years show that this is seldom true.

The FBI studied the question in detail in 1975, and discovered that 68% of murderers had prior felony arrests - and 57% had prior felony convictions. Common to all the non-discretionary permit laws that have been adopted, those convicted of felonies and recent misdemeanors are ineligible.

At least 30% of U.S. murders in 1993 were committed by teenagers, often coming out of highly dysfunctional homes. None of these non-discretionary permit laws adopted in other states require issuance to teenagers - in fact, nearly all require an applicant to be at least 21. And nearly all these new laws prohibit issuance of permits to anyone who has been held against their will for observation in the last few years.

Drug and alcohol abuse are also very strongly correlated to not only murder, but also suicide and gun accidents. For this reason, most of these non-discretionary license laws prohibit issuance of permits to anyone with a recent history of court-ordered drug or alcohol treatment, and a few prohibit possession of a gun while drinking alcohol.

Once you have removed these categories, you have removed the overwhelming majority of murderers in America.

Now, one of the questions that is going to be asked is: "What about this recent University of Maryland study that shows that murders went up after these laws took effect?" I've looked over the study and frankly, I would be embarrassed to have my name on it. To avoid boring you, let me give just one obvious deficiency of the study.

The most obvious flaw is that the researchers at the University of Maryland examined homicide counts (as recorded by the National Center for Health Statistics), not murderrates. Homicide includes not only murders and manslaughters, but also justifiable homicides (by police and civilians), and excusable homicides. We should expect that if 1-4% of the population is now carrying a gun for self-defense, at least occasionally, a victim is going to shoot back, and one of the bad guys is going to die. When a rapist, robber, or mugger gets killed by his victim, the bad guy's death shows up as a gun homicide.

Peace is a wonderful thing, but if a rape, a robbery, aggravated assault, or murder is prevented by the death of a criminal, this is not a tragedy - yet the University of Maryland study treats dead criminals and dead victims as equivalent. That's not just incorrect, it's immoral. The lives of decent people count for more than the lives of rapists, robbers, and murderers! For thousands of years, Western Civilization has recognized this distinction; it is a symptom of the collapse of decency that there are people prepared to argue that a justifiable homicide should be regarded the same as murder.

By contrast, the study that Dave Kopel and I prepared uses the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports murder rates. There are some problems with the FBI's murder rate statistics. The most critical problem is that when civilians kill in self-defense, these incidents are often reported to the FBI as murders - and the FBI's figures aren't corrected when the incident is reclassified by local police or courts. Available evidence suggests that at least 700 civilian defensive killings a year are initially reported as murder. This is probably even more true for those states where 1-4% of the population now carries a gun for self-defense. For this reason, the data contained within the paper that Mr. Kopel and I have produced probably understates the level of improvement in murder rates.

There are other serious problems with the University of Maryland study. If anyone wants to know more, I will be glad to elaborate.

There are a number of more technical criticisms that have been made of the University of Maryland study, but I think my comments are adequate to demonstrate that our tax dollars were, once again, flushed down the toilet, funding politically biased and incompetent research. The results are meaningless, unless you decide that the criminal's life is as important as the victim's life.

Some of you are, doubtless wondering, "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.

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).]

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).]

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 suprised 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]

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.

Thank you.

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