I should be allowed a CCW permit. I haven’t robbed or shot anyone in years.
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Well that would bar JAM from gun ownership.
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Published: September 12, 2009
Copyright 2009 New York Times

Safety-minded localities in gun-friendly Tennessee have delivered a blunt and very welcome lesson in gun control to the National Rifle Association. While Tennessee’s ever-obeisant Legislature has enacted a law permitting handguns in all state and local parks, about 70 cities and counties have voted to opt out of this latest lock-and-load obsession from the N.R.A.

This is common-sense evidence that statehouse bullying tactics by the gun lobby do not necessarily translate to the local level, not when people have a chance to disinvite guns into areas designed for adult relaxation and children’s play.

A local option to ban guns was written as a boilerplate clause for the new law, which extends gun packing to hundreds of parks — including public playgrounds, campgrounds, greenways and nature trails. Few state politicians anticipated there would be local resistance. But bans were voted by Nashville and Memphis and dozens of suburban counties and rural communities. The result is a crazy-quilt pattern of gun safety and risk that is prompting one county to ban student field trips and track meets to areas that did not opt to ban guns.

The gun lobby is not giving up, of course. It is already marshaling lobbyists and cash to ensure the next Legislature strips localities of their right to just say no.

Before they make that mistake, politicians who have spent years ignoring their consciences and taking the N.R.A.’s orders should listen closely to Tennessee’s citizens. As one demanded at a local hearing this summer: “Are you going to hear the voices of the unarmed?”

Otherwise, will TN have to have metal detectors at every entrance to public parks and arenas? I can’t imagine what might have happened in D.C. yesterday if all were ‘packin’. Also, the unfortunate incident where a pro-lifer was killed last week. Some say ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’….(with guns) should be added.
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I am not sure that concealed carry without permits don’t escalate the general population’s need to carry. I am not sure I want the wild west or road warrior future. Do you doubt the ability of a civilization that values peace?

Perhaps the focus on education and jobs as a preventive to anarchy and lawlessness has value after all.
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Seems we’re in a wild-west mentality with gangs in possession of guns. I don’t doubt the general population’s desire for a peaceful environment at all and can also see why people want to be able to defend themselves and their families.

It’s getting guns out of the hands of the gangsters. One attempt awhile back was to require all guns sold in the US come with a ‘history’ as to where they originally came from. That would’ve helped or maybe prevented illegal gun sales from foreign countries…

But then, I’m not a gun expert. Perhaps someone who reads this blog is and can drop in with their knowledge. I just found it interesting that Nashville, etc opted for no-guns in their public parks-so posted the editorial.
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Pleaase don’t take my word for it. I will post stats here when I have a little more time to do the digging.
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“A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, and dares say to reason, `Be thou a slave’; who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.

The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.”

It was true then. It remains true today.
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