Despite politicians’ hand-wringing and media doom-saying over the fact that open carry of firearms is legal in Cleveland, Ohio—and thus allowed during the Republican National Convention, where hundreds of protestors held demonstrations this week—the event was largely peaceful, as even the San Francisco Chronicle had to report.
In the wake of the Dallas police assassinations, and in advance of the convention, Stephen Loomis, head of the largest Cleveland police union, wrote to Ohio Gov. John Kasich urging him, as Loomis explained to CNN, “to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over.”
In the end, open carry of firearms was legal, the open carriers who attended caused no problems and, as the Chronicle reported, they scarcely even drew attention by the end of the convention. Sounds like the NRA convention this year in Louisville, where violent crime dipped while all those gun owners were in town.
