Three years after legislators passed a guns-in-parks law to allow licensed carriers to bring their handguns into events such as Chattanooga’s Riverbend Festival, an amendment to that law has given festival leaders the authority to ban firearms again.
Lt. Austin Garrett said the modified statute took effect in July 2017, just after last year’s Riverbend.
“It gives events and government agencies the ability to restrict the carrying of handguns where previously you could carry one in a park, and that kind of thing. The event has to cover several different specific criteria relative to security,” the Chattanooga Police Department offier said.
The bill, sponsored by Tennessee Rep. William Lamberth, R-Cottontown, grants certain entities the ability to make their own calls about firearms so long as they have “metal detection devices” and mandatory bag checks at each public entrance.
The bill also requires “at least one law enforcement or private security officer who has been adequately trained to conduct inspections of persons entering the property by use of metal detection devices” at entrances.