Ah, here’s a story which is a perfect convergence of those crazy gun control advocates and activist judges infecting their sinister anti-founding fathers memes into the minds of ordinary Americans in order to defeat our precious 2nd Amendment Rights. And in Tennessee forgawdssakes! Is nothing sacred!
A Davidson County judge ruled Tennessee’s controversial guns-in-bars law unconstitutional at a Friday hearing, prompting the state senator who sponsored the legislation to say he will push the issue again when lawmakers return in a few months. […]
She ruled after an hour of arguments in a lawsuit brought by a group of plaintiffs, many of them restaurant owners. More than 257,000 people have handgun carry permits in Tennessee. […]
“I think the judge’s common-sense ruling on the vagueness of the law affirms the recent MTSU Poll that showed over 80 percent of Tennesseans were opposed to the concept of guns in bars and restaurants,” Nashville restaurateur Randy Rayburn, a plaintiff in the case, said Friday afternoon.
Me personally? I don’t live in Tennessee, so I don’t have a dog in this hunt, so to speak. I don’t go to bars or restaurants there, so I don’t need to worry about one of the 275,000 people with concealed carry permits getting all “lickered up” and pulling out his or her handgun to “right a wrong” whether or not their judgment as to the matter might just be mildly impaired due to the effects of alcohol.
Sure, we don’t let people drive drunk because cars are, after all, deadly weapons, but I’m sure drunks social drinkers would be much more responsible with the use of their handguns while out for an evening of the good old fashioned American pastime of public intoxication.
Still, for some reason, bar and restaurant owners seem to have come down with the liberal commie fascist disease in Tennessee, because they didn’t like this law, which only expands our god given right to bear arms while pounding back a few shots of one’s favorite bourbon (please no jokes — let’s keep this a serious discussion). For example, have you ever heard anything so Wimpy and Bedwettingly Unamerican as this statement?
“We will have vigilantes shooting up bars all over,” said Randy Rayburn, the owner of three upscale cafes, who led opponents of the law.
Hey, aren’t we a nation founded on vigilantes. Isn’t that why Batman exists? Why lynch mobs were created? Why … oh never mind. I can see this isn’t going to end well. Damn liberals!
If it’s Tennessee, it ain’t bourbon, it’s Sour Mash.
Ah well, I’m a Yankee, and not very knowledgeable about the finer nuances of Southern Heritage and Culture.
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Show off!
I am a gun owner in a state which allows concealed carry permits. And I think that establishments should have the right to restrict what is brought onto their premises. I don’t believe, like many gun owners I know, that there should be an overarching allowance for concealed carry everywhere just because a state allows concealed carry permits to be issued.
That being said, this idea that those with concealed carry permits are just redneck goobers itching to pull out their Glock and spray a few rounds around the old watering hole is an illusion. The “vigilantes” that Mr. Rayburn alludes to will most likely have a gun regardless of any allowances like concealed carry. The vast majority of those I know with permits never carry a gun. And those that do on occasion are not wild eyed vigilantes.
There are arguments to be made about responsible gun control, but this wild west scenario laid out at the feet of concealed carry permits is really just a fantasy.
I have no doubt many concealed carry permit holders are responsible people. But letting anyone carry a dangerous weapon on their person while imbibing alcohol strikes me as sheer stupidity and a disaster waiting to happen.
Perhaps if they amended the law to prohibit gun owners who bring their weapons into bars and restaurants from drinking or purchasing alcohol I would have more sympathy for your position. However, as the law is written, there are no limitations in that regard.
The vast majority of those who drive their cars through red lights don’t kill anybody. So having red lights is silly, I guess.
This has nothing to do with reasonable gun owners.
This has everything to do with liquored up morons pulling guns to settle arguments, WHICH HAS ALREADY HAPPENED at least 2 different times in the last month. In one case, a gun fight broke out among 5-6 people, all of who were too drunk to hit anything.
Guns and alcohol are not a good mix.
Even when 80% of us think allowing guns in bars is stupid, you guys still take this as an opportunity to have a South-bashing festival?
Funny, the law struck me — as a Tennessean — as another example of well-funded and connected NRA gun nut lobby running roughshod over common sense and the popular will the same way it does in the other 49 states.
I would happily bash any state for a law like this. My favorite Aunt lives in Nashville so don’t assume I’m bashing the South. I am bashing the mindset that says the more guns in everyone’s hands at all times the merrier.
And believe me, I’m grateful that 80% of Tennesseans think this law was a bad idea. Too bad they elected a legislature that disagreed with them.
Are there any states north of the Mason Dixon and east of the Mississippi where the NRA has run roughshod over the popular will to enable guns in bars? If they managed to flout the will of 80% of the populace, isn’t there something deeply wrong enough about the state to warrant some bashing?
in 1993, they had open-carry laws. The camera-person filming the wedding was drinking straight shots of something, and had a large gun on his hip.
Meanwhile, I had three small children.
What the fuck does some moronic redneck gunwack need to bring a gun to a wedding in suburban Phoenix in a community center? Nothing NOTHING but sheer testosterone supplement here. He had the gun and it gave him a big charge to wear it.
It was moronic.