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In Georgia, Carry a Gun, Just Not in
the Capitol
by The Editorial
Board
March 25, 2014
There’s a lot of concern
about new legislation in Georgia that expands how people can
buy, carry and use guns. It reduces some licensing requirements and provides
Georgians with a stronger “Stand Your Ground” defense should they feel
threatened and decide to open fire. Some critics were calling it the “guns
everywhere” law. That’s so unfair. Georgia’s lawmakers are not
allowing everyone’s safety to be endangered by gun-slinging people. They are
deeply concerned, for example, with their own.
The bill, passed on Thursday
and awaiting the governor’s signature, will, among other things, allow people
to carry concealed weapons into more places — including ones, like bars, which
conveniently enough are spots where they are likely to be put to use.
They may also be carried in
unsecured areas of airports. Even toting a gun in secured areas will merely be
a misdemeanor in Georgia
as long as you did it by mistake. After all, who among us has not had the
embarrassing experience of forgetting they were carrying their Glock
semiautomatic through airport security?
Republican lawmakers in the
Georgia House tried — and failed — to require colleges and churches to allow
concealed weapons. The law bans them on college campuses (thank goodness for
that, at least) and requires armed Georgians to get permission from their
church before they go to Sunday services packing heat.
But, while patting themselves
on the back for protecting the Second Amendment rights of their fellow citizens
and dismissing any notion that guns could be a danger to the public, Georgia
lawmakers were careful to continue to ban the carrying of weapons in government
buildings with security checkpoints, like the Capitol itself, though guns are
welcomed in buildings without screening.
This bill is evidence that
cynics were wrong when they said nothing would come of the surge of attention
to guns after the Newtown, Conn., massacre in December 2012. Since
then, The Times reported, 70 laws have been passed to loosen restrictions. [Emphasis added.]
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