On February 3, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified to prevent any level of government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". Several states, not wanting to extend the right to vote to recently freed slaves and newly arrived immigrants, instituted a poll tax designed to serve as a financial roadblock to the right to vote. Finally, on January 23, 1964, the Twenty-fourth Amendment was passed prohibiting using a poll tax as a condition upon voting.

Fast forward less than fifty years and similar tactics are still being used to try to prevent citizens from exercising unwelcome rights.

This past weekend, the Ohio statewide rally for the upcoming Second Amendment March was held at the Ohio Statehouse. As the Ohio coordinator, I applied for an obtained an inexpensive permit to hold the rally on the West Plaza of the Statehouse. Had it just remained at that I would have had no issue with it. However, the permit which had been issued in July was suddenly in jeopardy two weeks prior to the event when I received a call from Statehouse security informing me that guns had been banned on Statehouse grounds, contrary to State law. Attempts were made to obtain an exemption from those rules so that attendees could exercise their Right to Keep and Bear Arms at the same time they exercised their Right to Peaceably Assemble.