Tennessee legislators must have a massive amount of faith and trust in alcohol fueled citizens to pass a bill that allows people to carry guns in bars. Personally, I trust my drunken neighbor with a gun as much as I trust a tiger jacked up on crystal meth to babysit a newborn. This is the greatest idea since flamethrowers in child daycare.
NRA spokesman, Rachel Parsons, stated that all she wanted was a clean bill. What she meant is that she wanted a bill with fewer restrictions. So they argued the important details, like what time you should be allowed to carry your firearm in a bar, and age restrictions. This bill keeps coming up and they’re debating whether or not to allow guns in bars between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.? It doesn’t take Einstein to realize how ridiculously stupid that is. If you believe that there’s no threat then a timetable doesn’t matter. If you believe that drunk people will fight and shoot each other then the timetable still doesn’t matter, because people will still get drunk and shoot each other. The timetable didn’t pass because it’s silly, not as silly as the whole bill, but still silly.
I don’t know how often Rachel Parsons gets out to the bars late at night, but the last time I was at the Campus Pub I saw a guy get tossed out the front door like something out of an old Western movie and beat to a pulp on the front steps. Murfreesboro’s finest came and did their duty by arresting the guy who got the crap kicked out of him. Within 10 minutes of the police leaving the Pub, a slew of squad cars pulled up to Gentleman Jim’s next door and the police dragged out some guy who supposedly tried to slip a roofie into a girl’s drink. Just last week I was in Savannah, Ga., when some guy who was completely wasted tried to start a fight with one of my friends. If you’ve ever had a few drinks then you know that people don’t suddenly get more rational when they drink. They get brave, ambitious and stupid.
Republican Rep. Curry Todd of Collierville was quoted by the Associated Press as stating that this bill gives folks the opportunity to protect themselves. Paranoid Todd is the bill’s primary supporter. I don’t know if he believes that there’s about to be an assault on the local Applebee’s bar, but that should be the only reason that a handgun would be necessary in a bar. If your motive is to bring a gun into a bar to defend yourself in a fist fight then you should probably reassess your cowardly disposition and learn how to fight, run or take a beating.
The people that are being put in the middle of this are the bar owners and the police. Bar owners can post their own “no gun” policies, which can drive away customers who see this as a political slight, or they can allow guns, which can drive away customers who feel uncomfortable being around drunk people with loaded pistols. And the police get the great job of handling armed drunken disputes. Since the legislators are okay with people carrying guns in bars why won’t they let people carry guns on the floor of the Senate? How about into courthouses? What, are they afraid somebody might get shot?
