The Republican convention will be able to proceed safely without changing Ohio's open-carry law, which allows citizens to display rifles and other guns on public streets, including those near the convention arena, the convention's chief executive said Sunday.
"Security is important, and I think that they have been planning around the security issues here for over nine months. The open-carry laws in Ohio haven't changed recently. It's been in effect for quite some time," Jeff Larson, chief executive officer of the Republican National Convention, told reporters at a news conference in Cleveland.
"They've had a number of big events that have taken place with open carry without any issues. They've been planning their security around that issue," Larson added.
The head of the Cleveland police union earlier in the day called on Ohio Gov. John Kasich to suspend the open-carry law in the area around the convention site. But Larson said he disagreed with that.
"It is the constitution in Ohio. The governor can't simply say, 'I'm going to relax it for a day or tighten it up for a five-day period of time.'
"There's going to be plenty of law enforcement in downtown Cleveland," he said. "There are a lot of people coming here to execute their First Amendment rights. And I mean we're going to be supportive of that. This is the United States of America, and people get a chance to do that in an orderly fashion."
"When they start getting disorderly, I think that the police will move in and take an effort. But I feel good about the security and what we've done and what we've planned. And I think it's going to be fine."
