Area residents and police officials are reasonably upset about the proliferation of handguns, particularly among gang members. Tennessee’s Legislature clearly doesn’t care about such concerns. Indeed, they’re still focused on nothing short of expanding gun-carry rights, and putting people with guns into volatile social circumstances.
Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Knoxville Republican, for example, has introduced a half dozen bills to expand gun-carry rights, including bills that would allow university students with handgun permits to have their guns on campus in their cars. He caused a stir a couple of weeks ago when he introduced other gun-related legislation that would have conflicted with UT’s efforts to keep student athletes from having and carrying guns.
If the Legislature goes along, he would not let the university prohibit or penalize lawful students and student-athlete gun-owners from possessing guns off school property. That justly rankles university administrators and the athletic department. UT has had more than its share of problems in recent years with players wrongly in possession of guns, and officials reasonably want to keep a zero-tolerance policy on gun possession.
The most troublesome bill, however, is the broad revision of the bill the Legislature passed last year which allowed people with handgun-carry permits to take their guns into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. The bill that was approved last year — and which was later thrown out as overly vague by a Nashville chancery court — limited gun-carry to businesses that served a minimum number of meals.
This year’s replacement bill is far broader and much more dangerous. It would allow patrons with handgun-carry permits to carry their guns into any place that serves alcohol, from road-houses, roughneck bars and honky-tonks to private clubs, if the business owners did not object to guns in their bars. Those that do could post signs forbidding patrons from carrying guns into their premises.