Courtesy of Oleg Volk

Not that long ago, many citizens choosing to carry defensive arms were forced to do so illegally at their own peril. Gun control ran rampant in this country as a result of liberal viewpoints run amok in the sixties and seventies. As a result of the gun control experiment, crime ran rampant and the citizenry was easy pickings for the criminals who had no qualms about breaking the law to be armed.

In the eighties, that all began to turn around thanks to the efforts of thousands of gun rights activists all across the country. The direct result was that concealed carry laws began to pass in state after state, many of them "shall issue" laws requiring that citizens willing to jump through the legal hoops to get a carry permit be issued one regardless of what any local bureaucrat's opinion on armed citizens might be.

Ohio joined that group of states in 2004 and today only two states still completely ban concealed carry. Six years later and now approximately 200,000 Ohioans have been issued a concealed handgun license (CHL). A recent annual report from the Ohio Attorney General reveals that 2009 was a record breaking year for Ohio with 56,691 CHLs issued, beating the previous record of 45,497 the first year of the program.