A piece of legislation out of Ohio (two actually…) is aiming to remove the training requirement for Concealed Carry Permits.
Firearm training is a prerequisite for obtaining a Concealed Carry Weapons Permit(CCW) in many states, Ohio being one of them, it’s not that bizarre a requirement to have and some in the 2A community might actually find this to be an incredibly reasonable requirement. Despite its support there are those who find issues with this requirement. One key issue with training being required for obtaining a CCW is cost, classes can be expensive and lord knows that ammunition can set you back a mile these days. Another issue that comes up when talking with opponents of this CCW requirement is more philosophical than economical, if someone is going through the trouble of getting a CCW permit they are likely familiar with the law already. Why bother forcing people to pay for these classes if they already intend on carrying legally and jumping through all the government hoops required to do so.
As interesting as these points are, they might be mute soon in the state of Ohio. Two bills have been put forward, House Bill 227 and Senate Bill 215, both of which would theoretically waive this permit requirement.
While these measures have their supporters they also have detractors. A member of Moms Demand Action, Sieglinde Martin, came out in a statement condemning the measure saying that this will put guns in the hands of “lowlifes.” One piece of data that these opponents of the measure keep pointing to is the number of permit rejections by year, specifically how this figure has been increasing in recent years.
A simple counterpoint to this data is this, CCW permit rejections are up because applications are up. More and more Americans are becoming gun owners, among these new gun owners are people who intend to carry their newly purchased firearms. It only makes sense that we would see an uptick in the number of people getting their permit applications rejected.
