Op-Ed: John Kasich Can’t Just Suspend Ohio’s Gun Laws

As the Republican National Convention began in Cleveland, prominent Democrats joined with local police in calling for Ohio Gov. John Kasich to suspend the state’s open-carry law during the convention.

Sherrod Brown, a progressive Democrat who represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate, went even further in an interview with BuzzFeed, saying he “hope[s] that the governor would listen to the police union and suspend conceal and open carry in Ohio, in Cleveland, during this convention.”

Brown, who is often mentioned as a contender for the Democrats’ vice-presidential nomination, makes the usual gun controller mistake of imagining the best way to prevent crime is to take firearms out of the people’s hands. But he makes other mistakes that show either a lack of understanding of how a republic functions, or else a shocking disregard for it.

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Where English kings claimed “prerogatives” like suspending the laws were an inherent part of the monarch’s power, our Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that limited the executive’s powers to those specifically granted to him. The authors of state constitutions followed suit in restricting an executive’s powers. Ohio’s constitution is even more explicit than the federal version, stating “No power of suspending laws shall ever be exercised, except by the General Assembly.”

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No provision says “people have the right to carry firearms openly.” There are restrictions on concealed weapons, on guns in cars, guns in bars, and guns in courthouses, but nothing to stop a person who legally owns a rifle from walking around with it in the open for all to see.

Kasich could not suspend open-carry laws even if he wanted to, because there is nothing to suspend. The point may sound semantic, but the difference is important. Asking an executive to suspend a law is unconstitutional, but it is at least physically possible. To suspend a law, the governor could point to a spot in the statute book and say “This provision does not apply anymore.” Illegal, yes, but not incomprehensible.

What is asked of Kasich here goes a step further. ...It is asking the governor to rule as a tyrant, a government of one, responsible to nobody.

Click here to read the entire op-ed at TheFederalist.com.