House Bill 60 decriminalized carrying guns in bars for people with Georgia weapons carry licenses. This single new location where licensees may carry guns somehow translates for extremists as “guns everywhere.” If they were the least bit concerned with accuracy, they would have called HB 60 the “Guns One More Place Bill.” Of course, that’s not so catchy. So they also come up with neat tag lines like, “Guns and alcohol don’t mix,” and, “We’re going back to the Wild West.”
What gun extremists don’t communicate are facts.
Fact 1: Bars in Georgia are rare. Most of the places people may think of as bars are in fact classified in Georgia as restaurants that serve alcohol. Places like Chili’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Taco Mac and other similar chains are all restaurants.
Fact 2: If a place is open on Sundays, it’s not a bar. Bars are not allowed to be open on Sundays.
Fact 3: Licensees have been allowed to carry guns in restaurants that serve alcohol since 2008. Oops. That means guns and alcohol have been mixing for several years without significant incident.
Fact 4: Licensees have been able to drink alcohol while carrying guns in restaurants that serve alcohol since 2010. Double oops. We have not gone back to the Wild West in those four years. In fact, pretty much nothing has happened, notwithstanding Chicken Little predictions from the gun extremists.
Fact 5: Everyone, not just licensees, has been able to carry short-barreled rifles, long-barreled handguns, and small-caliber firearms of all configurations into bars since 2010. Triple oops. People have been carrying guns in bars for four years, and there has not been a rash of shootings at bars.
Fact 6: What gun extremists like to call “assault weapons,” because that sounds especially scary but doesn’t really mean anything, commonly includes sporting rifles like the AR 15 configured with a short barrel. A license has never been needed to carry a rifle in public in Georgia, and short-barreled rifles have been unrestricted for carry anywhere since 2010. Are the statistics blowing the roof off, with blood in the streets from rifle deaths in Georgia? Nope. Deer and other game animals continue to be vulnerable to assault weapon attacks. Humans, not so much.
The bottom line is that facts do not favor the gun extremists, so they are forced to appeal to emotion to sell their message. They frequently worry about “the children,” but that particular appeal is dubious in the context of bars. Why would the extremists be taking their children to bars in the first place? (Hint: They shouldn’t be).
Unable to sell their message with children in bars, extremists resort to anecdotes about anything that happened anywhere near a bar or something bar-like that involved a gun. A licensee who was reportedly drunk allegedly shot and killed an off-duty police officer outside a Waffle House near Griffin. That incident has nothing to do with bars, but there was a gun and alcohol in the same story, so we should continue to ban guns in bars, or so the extremist message goes.
Until extremists can sell a message with cogent facts instead of random, disjointed stories designed to appeal to emotion rather than reason, they will continue to fail to appeal to the masses with their message. The large majority of Georgians cherish their rights to keep and bear arms “in case of confrontation” as the Supreme Court declared they have a constitutional right to do, and they will continue to do so.
John Monroe is vice president of GeorgiaCarry.org.
