Oh. This can’t be good.
Lawmakers in Georgia have passed what the NRA calls “one of the most permissive gun laws in the nation.” Talk about permissive. The law, that Republican Gov. Nathan Deal intends to sign, would allow guns to be carried in bars and churches. The legislation is a virtual “Guns Everywhere Bill,” according to those who oppose it.
Okay, once more. I am not a gun opponent. I have owned guns for a good portion of my life. I enjoy target shooting, specifically, if it involves blasting the hell out of cans. Take that you damned polluters.
But — and it isn’t just quasi-liberals like myself or just plain liberal anti-gun people — many people believe guns should just not be welcome in some places. Allowing guns in bars and churches is like inviting folks back into some Old West movie.
It doesn’t take a sociologist to know that the nation is politically divided at the moment. People who are getting hammered in bars may sometimes particularly get prickly when discussion of political issues get out of hand. Bar shootings are certainly not novel. The same goes for churches. Inflamed passions also may erupt when some preachers get on a tear and start calling a sinner a sinner and a who is a what’s it. Shootings in churches are not something that never happens. Even more is that true when someone has a bug up their ass about certain religious faiths.
Stay out of Georgia is on my agenda and should be on the minds of others as well.
Around my area, here in Southeast Texas, the big thing is promoting open carry of guns. We’re talking mostly long guns — rifles and shotguns, assault-type weapons — but maybe pistols too. The whole shebang locally started when a man who had a gun store in our local mall was detained by police for walking inside the mall to his store with a so-called assault rifle in plain view. Some nervous people made several calls on the man to police because he was exhibiting the weapon. That makes perfect sense in light of several mall shootings in recent years, both in the U.S. and in foreign countries. It wouldn’t have hurt anything if the man carried his rifle in a case, bag or box.
People thought nothing of it when, as kids, we would walk through town with our guns going hunting in the nearby woods. But that was then and this is now. I have thought that perhaps open carrying of weapons, as opposed to concealed carry, might make sense if you were in a frame of mind to pseudo-license handguns. I no longer think that is a good idea. Why? It’s partly because of seeing these men, women and children marching up and down the shopping area sidewalks carrying their rifles and shotguns. I don’t think it does anything other than upset folks. And when you have people with inflamed passions … well, see above in churches and bars.
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