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Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Guns at the airport?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two reminders from the morning’s news that America has become not so much a nation of laws as a nation of laws (*that we choose to consider binding).
One reminder comes from the editorial page in a letter supporting the decision by Atlanta city officials to arrest State Rep. Tim Bearden had he attempted to carry a concealed weapon into the airport, as he vowed to do. Upon threat of arrest, he backed down — and instead opted to pursue the right, contained in a new state law he authored through the courts. Like the good conservative, he opted not to create a spectacle, but to assert the rule of law through the proper channels.
The reaction of one of today’s letter-writers, Vincent Kelly of Atlanta, was to support the decision by Mayor Shirley Franklin and airport General Manager Ben DeCosta to ignore the state law. Wrote Kelly: “As Georgia lawmakers have proven time and again, new law crafted in the heat of passion is made to be broken…”
That’s some variant of the city’s position. Presumably, because the mayor and others disagree with the the law that allows individuals with legal permits to carry guns to take them into the airport.
There’s a distinction here. Nobody can carry guns or other weapons past the security check-point. But the city is a creation of the state and the state does have a perfect right to designate where guns are permitted within its jurisdiction, including the land within cities. At the airport, the feds control one space — a space the state is not allowed to regulate with its laws — and the state, through its creation, the City of Atlanta, controls another.
The mayor and local officials disagree with the law. They therefore believe that it’s OK to ignore it, to question its legitimacy and its need, and to arrest the author if he attempts to exercise his rights under the law.
A nation of laws? *Yes (if we like them and choose to allow them to apply to us).
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