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The Senate bids a not-so-fond farewell to the guns-in-parking-lots bill

The state Senate takes up the drastically narrowed guns-in-parking lot bill today — which might, or might not, apply only to those Georgians who carry concealed weapons permits.

After the Senate Rules Committee delivered the gutting on Tuesday, Joe Fleming, the top lobbyist for the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, declared it a “stunning rebuke of the NRA,” which had pressed for the measure hard for two years.

But he also said this: “The Georgia Chamber of Commerce still has concerns with the legislation, including the vague, contradictory and ambiguous language in the bill.”

Translation? The organization still formally opposes the measure, but won’t mount any kind of organized opposition today.

“We won’t be working the ropes,” Fleming said.

Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment |

Comments

By scott

January 17, 2008 11:42 PM | Link to this

remember the phrase”going postal”? it might be happening alot more IF people are allowed to have guns in thier cars at work

By Will Strunk

January 18, 2008 12:23 AM | Link to this

Read Scott’s illiterate babbling and juxtapose the same with the constant ridicule of “gun nuts.” Ever heard of capitalization, punctuation and spelling? Thanks alot[sic].

By Churchill

January 18, 2008 1:21 AM | Link to this

Let me guess, Scott. Pubic education?

By GA Resident

January 23, 2008 3:31 PM | Link to this

Scott: HB 89 does not affect postal workers. Carrying a pistol to or at a federal post office was then and is still today against the law. HB89 doesn’t affect persons without a Georgia Firearms License, and it doesn’t affect any of the dozens of places still off-limits to carry a pistol in Georgia. The law last year is the same as the law next month on these issues.

If you read HB 89 for yourself, and don’t take as granted what the papers print about it, you’ll see that carrying a handgun for personal protection to a “public gathering”, or while at a “public gathering” is still illegal in Georgia, permit or not.

HB 89 has no provision to repeal the Georgia-specific prohibition on ‘carrying to or while at a public gathering, including but not limited to: athletic or sporting events, churches or church functions, political rallies or funtions, publicly owned or operated buildings, or places where alcohol is served for consumtion on the premises’ (Code of Georgia Annotated, section 16-11-127).

Combined with Farmer v. State (1965) and Hubbard v. State (1993), this includes the above venues and their repsective parking lots up to and including 200 yards away from the venue.

But the statesmen here in Georgia will tell you that Georgia is very pro-second amendment…

As far as the ‘going postal’ comment: GFL holders have criminal conviction rates that are barely perceptible in comparison to the nations’ population as a whole. Not just weapons violations, but all violations. People with carry permits are -by law- not felons (they receive FBI and state criminal history background checks).

For the person likely to carry a gun to their work and cause a crime with it, what exactly is there out there to stop that today? Or yesterday? Or three months ago?

Mass workplace shootings haven’t been a problem in Georgia up until today, so why bring it up as if it were an imminent pandemic?

Ad hominem attacks like yours smack of desperation.

Put up some real, tangible reasons not to allow a responsible, peaceable adult to carry a firearm at their discretion, wherever they choose, or stop crying about how the sky is falling.

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