As previously reported in this blog, controversial new legislation signed into law last month by Georgia's Republican Governor will allow folks with licenses to carry concealed firearms to bring their guns into restaurants and onto MARTA trains. Although the bill was opposed by representatives of the Georgia Restaurant Association, by MARTA officials, and by Atlanta's Democratic Mayor on the grounds that allowing guns in restaurants and on buses and trains would pose a threat to public safety, the Governor caved in to pressure from the National Rifle Association and other groups, who had made passage of this law in Georgia and other states a priority. The law goes into effect today.To make matter worse, the Republican state rep who authored the bill has realized that MARTA goes to Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport, and from that he has extrapolated that he now has the right to carry a concealed weapon at the world's busiest airport. "I have a permit, and I have family I have to pick up at the airport tomorrow [Tuesday]," he said. "I'll have one [a concealed weapon] with me at all times."
The Airport General Manager said that if the representative shows up at airport with a gun, he'll be busted. "I can identify him, and I'll have him arrested," the GM said. "We're not fooling around. This is a post-terrorism environment."
Great. Our elected officials are basically challenging law enforcement officials to a showdown at the busiest airport in the world, and sending a message to their constituencies that it's appropriate to do the same. For what it's worth, I've been to Hartsfield Airport many, many times, and have never felt that I needed a gun there for my safety. I have to wonder what, exactly, is the state rep so afraid of?
In my opinion, MARTA and the airport, not to mention all those bars, restaurants and saloons, have just gotten that much less safe.
I've got to get out of this place.
1 comment:
When the "Sullivan" law was enacted in New York, the deaths of innocent bystanders as unintended consequences of gun use was a national disgrace. It seems quite predictable in the statistical, though not the instance sense, that unintended deaths and injury WILL eventually be the byproduct of this legislation. I wonder if deaths of actual assailants at the hands of these "empowered" random citizens will even outnumber the accidental deaths. I am glad my wife's cousin has only one child...we won't need to visit ATL for a B'nai mitzvah ever again. Nothing much else would attract me to the place even though nature's intent was for the region to be a garden spot lush and teaming.
The irrationality of the gun-clingers fairly screams at us but they do not hear it themselves.
The tendency, and I consider it willful, to dwell on vague and free floating perceptions of threat and to use those perceptions as justification marks a distinct subset of personalities. That subset and its dysfunctional psychology give us the NRA and the Neocon core of the Republican party.
Brave means going unarmed when the risk of harm is slight in order that you yourself do not add to the risk of others. We have ceased to be the "home of the brave" and that is why, despite the shrill howling that dresses gun-clinging in the language of "freedom", we will cease to be the "land of the free".
The NRA is sick, the Supreme Court is wrong. My condolences to those families who will subsequently lose loved ones for no good reason at all.
Post a Comment