moving forward (slightly)

Once again, the Commercial Appeal tries to report the news, although this time, their obvious anti-Second-Amendment, anti-self-defense, and anti-rights bias is not quite as evident.

Bills allowing people licensed to carry guns to take them into state and local parks advanced Wednesday. A separate bill allowing guns in restaurants serving alcohol stalled for a week.

So this opening segment is more than a little disjointed to read, but at least it is not as bad as yesterday’s.

Another bill closing public access to all information on Tennessee’s 220,000 gun-carry permit holders also was deferred for a week.

Wow. Another surprisingly emotion-free sentence. Of course, this is somewhat offset by the secondary headline of “Votes on restaurant measure, permit-holder secrecy put off”. I guess one cannot expect the bigoted staff of the Commercial Appeal to give up their biases overnight.

The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill sponsored by Rep. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, to allow gun-carry permit holders to take their guns into all state parks. Another allowing handguns into state wildlife management areas and refuges, except for when those areas are closed, also advanced.

My only real complaint with this particular segment is the use of the term “gun-carry permit holders”. My permit, and the permits of all other permit-holders here in Tennessee, clearly says “Handgun Carry Permit”, and Tennessee State Code clearly indicates that our permits only authorize us to carry devices classified as “handguns”. Carrying long-guns for hunting purposes is an entirely different matter, but I cannot just stroll into WalMart with a loaded AR-15 over my shoulder.
As I have always said in reference to the Commercial Appeal’s writings – words matter, and whether Richard Locker intentionally used the term “gun” as opposed to “handgun”, or did it out of typical ignorance, the end result of someone imagining the hypothetical situation I just posed becomes quite likely. As usual, the staff of the Commercial Appeal continues to feed on and contribute to the irrational fears of people unfamiliar with or honestly afraid of firearms… how sad is that?

A bill that would open city- and county-operated parks to guns carried by permit holders was approved by a House subcommittee. Originally, it would have opened all local parks — gun-free zones under current law — but the subcommittee amended it to give city councils and county commissions discretion in regard to parks under their control.

This bill (HB0960 – it certainly would be nice if Robert were a little more specific, would it not?) is going to turn into a bleeding nightmare for handgun carry permit holders. Unless you enter a park through one of its few, official, designated entrances, you have no way of knowing whether you are in a city, county, or state park… or even if you are in a park at all. Step off a sidewalk onto a greenspace, and you could very well be in a city park, and you would have no way of knowing if you did not live there. So now we are presented with the possibility of a patchwork of regulations, where one county/city allows it, and the next county/city over does not, and we handgun carry permit holders are left with the responsibility of keeping up with which of the hundreds of cities and counties in Tennessee allow handgun carry in their parks, and which do not.
Like I said, a nightmare. At least it appears as though the default setting will be “allowed”, and then the cities and counties will have to pass regulations to change that, if they want to, but this is still a scant victory.
Oh, and sorry, Robert, but current law does not make any park in this fine state of ours a “gun-free zone”. Sure, the law may designate those parks as “gun-free zones”, but I can pretty much guarantee you that at least one criminal has carried at least one firearm into at least one park in this state, which kind of stops it from being a “gun-free zone”, now, does it not? You should be less concerned with maintaining the fallacious integrity of “gun-free zones” (otherwise known as “victim disarmament zones”), and more concerned with ensuring that law-abiding, peaceful, private citizens (you know, like the ones whose privacy your newspaper invaded) are able to carry the necessary equipment to try to adqeuately defend themselves.
Because, oddly enough, my right to self-defense trumps your right to “feel” safe.

The restaurant bill, sponsored by Rep. Curry Todd, R-Collierville, was deferred because an amendment prohibiting guns after 11 p.m. in restaurants serving alcohol was filed late.

*sighs* Stupid politicians. Take a good idea. Make it more complex than necessary. And then screw up the execution.
I do not know whether or not the amendment itself was filed late, but if you watch the video concerning the bill (in this case, HB0962), you will see that it basically boils down to the chairman not having the full bill including all amendments, the presenter not knowing what he was talking about, and the deferment resulting from no one having a clue what was going on.
Hopefully a week will give these people a chance to get their ducks in a row, prepare for their presentations, and, you know, do their jobs.

No non-legislator testified Wednesday, but Charles Gillock of Memphis said in a telephone interview that he supports the gun-carry expansions for protection.

“Most people who go to the trouble of getting the carry permits do it for the purpose of protection, and to abide by the law forces you to either leave your gun at home or in a locked car in most of the locations where you might need it,” said Gillock, whose car was broken into twice in the last year.

“If I go to a restaurant in Downtown Memphis, I have to either leave my gun at home or in a parking space, which is not safe, and then walk to a restaurant without it. The reason I went through the classes is to have it, like when I walk around Downtown Memphis at night.”

So to make up for the one-sided interviewing yesterday, Richard interviews Mr. Gillock… who is… whom, exactly? The article certainly does not identify who he is, and a quick-and-dirty Google search on him does not seem to reveal anything of any great use. So, on the one hand, we have a lobbyist for the Tennessee Hospitality Assocation, and on the other hand, we have an average citizen. I am not sure whether to be honored or offended at the comparison.
Apart from that, though, I certainly cannot disagree with what Mr. Gillock has to say, and I would further point out that studies have shown that handgun carry permit holders are, in fact, more-law-abiding than most people, which would only give further creedence to his words.
Furthermore, Mr. Gillock’s examples only illustrate the idiocy of the currrent laws… to eat out at a restaurant that serves alcohol, you not only have to be disarmed at the restaurant itself, but you have to travel to and from it without your firearm as well (since restaurants do not exactly have a “handgun check”). Sometimes that means leaving the firearm at home, sometimes that means securing it in the car. But, either way, your foot traffic to and from the restaurant leaves you without any defenses, and in large cities with limited parking availability, that walk could be quite a ways. State-mandated defenseless victimhood is never something to encourage.
Oh, and for clarification, Tennessee is only one of ten states that does not allow any form of carry in restaurants that serve alcohol:

(Image borrowed from OpenCarry.org.)
Have those states been experiencing “blood on the bars”? Not so much. Time to bring Tennessee up to speed.
I would, however, stress that simply locking your firearm in a car, or even locking it in your glove compartment, is not safe manner of securing it. It is occasionally required by the current laws that disarm law-abiding citizens when they want to eat out or go to the parks, but I would strongly suggest a secure system (example) for ensuring that your firearm is not stolen (or at least decreasing the possibility).

The bill making permits confidential was delayed at the request of its sponsor, Rep. Eddie Bass, D-Pulaski, because he wants time to work on penalties for publishing the information.

His bill currently makes it a misdemeanor to publish any information about gun-carry permit holders, but Bass said he is considering replacing that provision with a different one enabling permit holders to file civil lawsuits if they can prove they are harmed by publication of the information.

*sigh* Another politician changing his mind, mid-stream, and to a less-useful position, at that. My understanding of current law is somewhat loose at times, but I was under the impression that civil lawsuits can be brought for pretty much whatever reason desired. Granted, they can be thrown out, but if I had proof that the privacy-invading database in question caused me direct harm, what is already preventing me from bringing a civil lawsuit against the Commercial Appeal and anyone else who propagated the information?
So we went from felony, to misdemeanor, to “oh, you can sue if you want to”. Forgive me for not being thrilled at this development. Sure, a class-action lawsuit of over 218,000 law-abiding, private citizens against the Commercial Appeal would be rather entertaining, but those take time and copious amounts of money, and there is no guarantee of success. Oh well, at least it will make the State’s database private… just unenforceably so.
All said, rights advocates here in Tennessee are making some headway, but we are losing a few items along the wayside, too. “Some victories” is assuredly better than “no victories”, but I cannot help being disappointed at how watered-down they are becoming.