“Ohio is a traditional open-carry state,” wikipedia.org informs. “The open-carry of firearms by those who legally possess the firearm is a legal activity in Ohio with or without a license. While legal, the practice is not common in urban areas and often results in police responding. Various cases of harassment by police on those open carrying have been documented.” Only not in the Cleveland suburb of Chagrin Falls . . .
Suspicious, Hall Street residents became upset seeing a man walking down the street carrying a rifle on June 5.
An officer located him and learned he was headed to a friend’s house on Solon Road to watch military movies and commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the World War II Invasion of Normandy. The officer offered him a ride to the get-together.
That’s the entire report from cleveland.com. What else needs saying really? Commentators below are wondering if the cops gave the open carry guy a ride to get him off the streets, to save themselves aggravation. Even if that’s true, I agree with those who call it a win – win. No aggro for the rifle bearer and brownie points for police – community relations.
Anyway, if you want to post a quick thank you to the cops, use their website’s contact form. Click here if you’re so inclined.
It’s a beautiful thing.
It’s also pretty new if I recall. I moved out of Cincinnati four years ago and I don’t remember it being open carry.
The whole state has always been open carry! Cincinnati, like the rest of the state has been open carry and many of us have carried there repeatedly. Ohio Revised Code 9.68 is clear that cities cannot make rules more stringent than state law. Although there was some resistance offered by Cincinnati City Council, AFAIK, that was cleared up farther back than four years ago. The most problems have been from cities in Northern Ohio. They lose in court but have been obstinate from time to time. The only way that seems to get these cities and towns in Ohio to follow the law is by those of us open carrying often. The lesson has to be reinforced from time to time so that the police departments are compelled to train their officers. Otherwise, they claim ignorance when it comes time to settle accounts. It can be frustrating and takes a lot of our time, energy, and money doing this.
Is that for citizens of Ohio only? How about someone visiting? Thanks for any input!
If one can legally own the firearm under federal law and Ohio law then one can open carry it. Even those under 21 years of age who acquired a handgun legally as a resident of another state can carry here. Children under supervision have open carried along side us too. Of course, there is still work to be done, especially in Northern Ohio and amongst our own gun owning population. There are also problem spots here and there throughout the state. If you choose to OC (and I hope that all would), please educate yourself fully on the law and the nuances of local enforcement (or non-enforcement) of state law.
Carry on!
Thank you, John! I visit the Cincy area often, wondered how it would work. Thanks again.
Open carry has been legal in Ohio since before 1804 and with statewide preemption since January 1, 2004.
Open carry is part of the Ohio Constitution (if I remember correctly). The problem was that for awhile Cincinnati had a run of very anti-gun mayors (and along with it, anti-gun police chiefs) that went out of their way to harass gun owners and try to drive them out of the city. Thankfully the Ohio Supreme Court stepped in and started bitch slapping cities that try to ban guns.
Here’s a memo issued to Cincinnati PD by the Chief of Police in 2012 telling them that if someone is open carrying and not acting violent, then leave them the frak alone.
http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/linkservid/18BFD387-B6DA-077C-9CA3C47BC23AB4F0/showMeta/0/
+1
The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security; but standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be kept up; and the military shall be in strict subordination to the civil power.
The right to bear arms is protected under the Constitution of Ohio. In 2004 that right was split into a privilege of licensed concealed carry with the right of open carry remaining untouched. If the State makes it too difficult to open carry then Ohio would be violating its own constitution because only the privilege would remain.
That pretty well spells it out, doesn’t it?
Yep, it sure does. Thanks for posting that CPD memo. I didn’t have time to fish it out. Also, the Hamilton County Prosecutor had issued one a few years earlier (IIRC). For those who don’t know, Cinicnnati is in Hamilton County. Cincinnati has been aware for a long time that OC is perfectly legal and that those who do so are not inciting a panic, conducting themselves disorderly, etc by just open carrying. Indeed, unless an officer has a reasonable articulable suspicion that an actual crime has been committed or is about to be, one need not even identify or engage in conversation with the officer.
Fun Fact: Open carry is part of the US constitution too! See: 2nd Amendment
(I wish the president would check it out, fascinating reading)
I sent a thank you message. Wish more PD would work with the community in the same way instead of arresting people with long black umbrellas as has been done many times in CT.
Very cool.
Wait, is this actually cool? Officer gives him a ride just to get him off the streets quicker, or was he actually being a good person?
Granted, better police work than many stops, but if the man wants to walk, he should be allowed to walk.
First Blood for the win.
Well, given that the man was breaking no laws I’m sure he could have declined the ride. If the officer was driving the car shown above, why would he though, how cool. Even if the officers motive was to prevent more scaring of the muggles by offering a ride, is that so bad? If the fellow wanted a ride I’d call that a win win.
I agree. Quite possibly they wanted to spare themselves more busy work at the hands of nervous people calling in. I respect that.
Totally agree…win/win!
It could be cool or not depending on the details. Absent more facts, I’ll just give a nod and a brief smile as I move along. I won’t be thanking any department for not breaking the law because they aren’t supposed to anyway. Too many departments have been boneheaded for too long about this subject in spite of the facts in front of them.
If the story was that they asked the man to go with them to the complainant’s location so that they could explain that open carry was perfectly legal and okay so next time only call for real crimes… that would be certainly worthy of praise, IMHO.
It was actually cool. Once, in Minneapolis, I ran out of gas in the middle of a busy intersection. The cops that showed up pushed my car off the street, then gave me a lift to the gas station and back with my gas can.
There are, in fact, good cops. Even when I was getting rousted for DUI, the cops were always polite and professional.
And I love this guy: http://youtu.be/u-OFO70Erjg?autoplay=0
Great video!
Very nice to see something like that.
People give some cops way too hard of a time. Most of them are a decent sort, just trying to earn a paycheck. Some of them are assholes some of the time, some of them go above and beyond some of the time. Sometimes it’s the same guy doing both extremes.
They are people just like anyone else, even if there is a bit of an overall attitude problem between police and the rest of us, they are decent folk for the most part.
And residents see the Office put the “perp” in the squad car and take him away.
That is a very real possibility. The original article looked like a run-of-the-mill police report blurb for the paper so some local readers will take it one way and other local readers there will take it another way. That’s why I’m not going overboard on the back slapping. It’s good that they didn’t blatantly harass him. It’s good that they offered him a ride. But, we don’t know if it was the result of coercion under the color of law or if it was how many here are perceiving the incident. Having interacted with (and had many friends do same) Ohio officers about OC, I’m taking it as mostly on the positive with some reservation since the details aren’t known. At least it is an improvement.
That’s a big improvement for Northern Ohio. If we can get officers to just leave people alone who are not obviously committing a crime, then I’ll open the champagne. IMHO, the only way to do that is to keep open carrying often. That’s how we’ve fixed trouble spots in the past here.
Its the home town of Bill Watterson/Calvin and Hobbes. He had a comic where Calvin imagined bombing the elementary school. I wonder if that would be accepted now.
Thank you Cleveland, may your time be full and your Peace persevere.
Cleveland rocks. And it seems to be making a comeback btw. Given the option I’d take Cleveland over Boston or NYC in a second.
The city is making a huge comeback especially on the film, theater, and restaurant scene.
I’m hoping that the rifle being carried was something suitable for the D-Day anniversary- M1 Garand etc.
A REAL assault rifle. Straight from the coast of Normandy, Anzio, Okinawa, and the Chosin Reservoir.
Not an assault rifle, but a battle rifle. Assault rifles use intermediate rounds, while battle rifles use rifle rounds. Assault rifles are also all full auto/select fire, where old battle rifles may or may not be.
My first gun was my dad’s old M1 Garand and I cannot praise it enough, though now that I have an M1A the M1 Garand doesn’t see as much range time.
Awesome! And Chagrin Falls is one of the coolest communities I’ve visited in Northern Ohio. Very Small town America feel.
It’ actually COOL Robert W. Maybe he was an old guy too. +1 cops.
Chagrin Falls is a a wonderful place, I used to live right up the street. Once you get away from Cleveland and the inner-ring suburbs and outside of Cuyahoga County, northeast Ohio isn’t bad at all. Except for the winters. The winters are amazingly awful.
Great to see a picture of officers posing in front of a classic police cruiser, rather than an MRAP!
I once had a cop give me a ride home when he found me drunkenly contemplating how to get into my car with the keys firmly locked in it. that was in a larger midwestern town.
They do not always have to be dicks.
He should have given you a ride to jail and you should be off of the roads permanently.
For what — attempted drunk driving?
I don’t care about your weasel-lawyer musings: what do you think he was going to do if he could have gotten in the car, genius?
Get his keys to get into his house. Reasonable doubt – BOOM
Back in the day I was hitchhiking through rural Indiana. A local deputy stopped, checked me out, then took me about 10 miles down the road to a campground I was headed to for the evening. Was he being nice or was he getting me closer to being out of his county? I didn’t care. We both got what we wanted that afternoon: me being farther down the road and closer to my destination.
Wait, what did he “want”, LOL.
The name has to give you pause.
Chagrin = distress or embarrassment at having failed or been humiliated
Of three hypotheses as to the origin of the name, the most probable is that it is a corruption of the name of a Frenchman, Sieur de Seguin. Wiki
I worked in, and had many friends in Charin Falls in my teen years, and it is a place of fond memories from my youth. It is a hold-over of simpler times. The center of town harkens back to the days when all small mid-west towns looked like Chagrin. If you want the hustle and bustle of a big time city with all the anonymity of a large faceless police force, then Chagrin Falls is definitely not for you. In that sense, this story doesn’t surprise me at all.
The photo of the old patrol car brought back memories of my youth where all the kids ( even through the teen years) knew that the police were our friends. The local force did not even wear .38 special revolvers they were still issued 1920s vintage colt police positive in .38 colt new police and S&W in .38 S&W . This was a black powder vintage cartridge…. I do recall being shown the force’s Thompson and the Winchester trench guns in the heavy weapons locker. But they were never issued and dated from when the coastal town had beach patrols during WW2.
Not that long ago this was the norm for police away from the biggest citys.
Think of the 50s TV show “Highway Patrol” with Broadric Crawford.
They were not the scary paramilitary SWAT garbed units with their urban assault trucks… They were approachable and friendly right out of a Norman Rockwell cover painting.
How did we get so far away from that version of a smaller than large city police force?
How did we get so far away from that version of a smaller than large city police force?
The war on individual Liberty is how. It began before WWII and was sold in the forms of Prohibition, “War on Drugs”, “War on Poverty”, and other propagands. The American people were sold on the supposed need of the NSA, DHS, TSA, etc all while the right to keep and bear arms was infringed upon. The American people allowed their children to be brainwashed through compulsory education and institutions of higher learning infested by the Progressive agenda. Liberty minded individuals are lagging far behind the massive machine already in operation against freedom. So many still want the nanny state but they don’t even realize that’s what their advocating (even many gun owners).
I grew up there…I have a picture of me and my Dad in that very car. About one mile to the east, you’re in full on deer country.
What! A cop that knows the law and is a good samaritan to boot. Wow, why can’t they all be like that…
Kudos to the Chagrin Falls PD!
I hope they gave the carrier a ride in the front seat, else onlookers will presume to have been arrested and thus be more likely to busybody in future.