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Thompson: Looking at the world through a gun sight
Story updated at 7:33 PM on Saturday, December 8, 2007
Jim Thompson

On the strength of one word in a two-year-old state law, GeorgiaCarry.org, a gun-rights group claiming several hundred members, is working - successfully, as it turns out - to force its sad vision of how people should have to live on a number of communities, including Athens-Clarke County. GeorgiaCarry.org is using the word "carrying," as it appears in Title 16 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, at 16-11-173 (2)(b)(1), as a means of forcing some local governments - which have had the temerity to suggest there are some places guns shouldn't be allowed - to comply with an obscure provision of state law that says otherwise.
Here, in its entirety, is 16-11-173 (2)(b)(1): "No county or municipal corporation, by zoning or by ordinance, resolution or other enactment, shall regulate in any manner gun shows; the possession, ownership, transport, carrying, transfer, sale, purchase, licensing, or registration of firearms or components of firearms, firearms dealers; or dealers in firearms components." The language is part of a significant revamping of the state's firearms laws that was approved in the 2005 session of the Georgia General Assembly. For the record, it got "yes" votes from Republican state Sens. Ralph Hudgens and Brian Kemp and Republican state Rep. Bob Smith, and "no" votes from Democratic state Reps. Keith Heard and Jane Kidd, who then comprised this community's legislative delegation.
In the wake of the 2005 legislative session, GeorgiaCarry.org has challenged a number of Georgia communities that have - or, in most cases, had - local ordinances that limited, in some fashion, where firearms could be carried. Most of the challenged communities dropped their restrictions when those ordinances were questioned by GeorgiaCarry.org. The Coweta County government, which took the gun group to court, had a favorable Superior Court ruling overturned last week in the state Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel held that "the plain language of the statute expressly precludes a county from regulating 'in any manner [the] ... carrying ... of firearms.' "
An Athens-Clarke County ordinance banning guns in parks also has been targeted by GeorgiaCarry.org, and Tuesday's appeals court ruling has County Attorney Bill Berryman facing a decision whether it makes sense to continue defending the county against the group's lawsuit. In truth, it may not make sense. The appeals court's reading of the statute seems reasonable. The law does, in fact, say that local governments can't regulate the "carrying" of firearms, and as far as Athens-Clarke County is concerned, it seems clear that keeping guns out of public parks is regulating where guns can be carried.
Never mind that it's likely that if GeorgiaCarry.org wasn't pressing this case, 16-11-173 (2)(b)(1), at least as it relates to carrying a firearm, would be a little-noticed provision of state law that would, as is apparently the case in Athens-Clarke County, be breached to no ill effect. Still, it appears that GeorgiaCarry.org has the law on its side. What it - and by extension, the state law at issue - doesn't have on its side is an abundance of reason.
Why shouldn't a community be allowed to decide that it doesn't want people carrying concealed handguns in its public parks? Of course, the immediate answer to that question from gun rights advocates is that an unarmed populace is at the mercy of anyone who might decide to turn a public place into a shooting gallery. And in this day of the 24-hour news cycle, that can seem like a real danger. Just last week, a troubled young man walked in to an Omaha mall and gunned down eight people before turning his gun on himself. Almost before the last shot was fired, network news anchors and reporters were in place at the mall, giving non-stop attention to the incident. But when was the last time anyone was gunned down in an Athens-Clarke County park? Yeah, I know - it could happen tomorrow. But I'll bet that it won't. And I'll bet that it won't happen the next day, or the next, or the next.

That said, I can, to a degree, understand the fears of the GeorgiaCarry.org folks. What I can't even begin to fathom is how it must be to believe everything, including a trip to the park, carries the potential for gun violence to erupt. But I guess that when you insist on looking at the world through a gun sight, you get a pretty skewed view.

• Jim Thompson is editorial page editor of the Athens Banner-Herald. He can be contacted at (706) 208-2222 or by e-mail at jim.thompson@onlineathens.com.

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 120907

Lucky45 wrote:Has anyone come across anything like this in Texas???