Wild west my eye

So, Brandt is wondering about Ohio’s concealed-weapons bill. He wants to know when the shootouts start. Ha ha.
When I was considering moving here, I was disturbed by the fact that Ohio doesn’t allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons. This seems like a fundamental right to me, but then I grew up with guns in my home– I was taught from an early age how to handle them safely, how to hunt with them, and so on. I’m not scared of them as some fundamentally eeevil force; they’re no more inherently dangerous than my power tools or gasoline cans. I have many friends in various states that allow CCW; those that I know to carry on a daily basis range from a biker-looking 6’4″ guy with a buzz cut to a mild-mannered chain-smoking author to a very refined and elegant-looking middle-aged woman to a sweet-natured Mormon housewife with three young kids. They carry for self-protection, and I fail to see anything wrong with that.
Clearly I’m not going to change Brandt’s mind; after all, he’s admitted to being “anti-gun”, which is right up there with “pro-choice” or “pro-life” as a signal that someone’s mind is made up, thankyouverymuch. I would just point out that there’s no statistical or anecdotal evidence that having CCW increases street crime. I’m not going to bother citing John Lott or any of the other scholarly studies that prove this, because I don’t think they’ll change his mind either.
I will, however, ask this: how does a law permitting concealed weapons carry “legitimize concealed carry for everyone whether your local sheriff has given you a permit” or not? If you have a permit, you can legally carry. If you don’t have a permit, you cannot– exactly the same situation we’re in now. If you carry a concealed weapon without a permit, you go to jail (in fact, in Ohio you are assumed guilty unless proven innocent!) Passing a law to legalize something doesn’t legitimize it under other conditions– despite what all the War on Drugs folks say about medical marijuana.