OK, I’m looking for someone in the state Senate to man up and turn the college carry pistol-packing bill into a real Guns Everywhere bill. Allow firearms in the state Capitol.
While visiting the Capitol I’ve felt a certain void. Then it hit me, there are no civilian good guys with guns around to stop bad guys with guns.
Sure, there is a small army of Capitol police and state troopers patrolling the corridors, manning the entrances and guarding the legislative chambers. They’re good guys. And they do have guns.
But why do our elected representatives need government protection? Many of our legislators get high marks from the NRA and like to brag about it. Shouldn’t they be called to duty to help protect the place?
Lobbyists, too. Don’t just mill around the hallways waiting to tug on a senator’s arm. You should have a Glock positioned under your Jos. A. Banks suit in case you are called to do your part. Also, being armed might impress legislators, especially Republicans, who are the only ones who count these days.
The bill passed in the House allows those over age 21 with concealed carry licenses to pack when attending class or teaching. It was a continuation of 2014's Guns Everywhere bill which allowed firearms at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, in bars and some churches — that is if the pastor is an Old Testament guy.
Anyways, there always has been a whiff of hypocrisy surrounding the gun debate at the Capitol: legislators want armed civilians wandering about but not so much when it comes to their own house.
Just about any morning at the Capitol there are queues of good guys without their guns lining up outside waiting to go through security. One guy in line complained about being behind a slow-moving high school class, likening it to being in a line at the Louvre.
Lawmakers, naturally, are immune to such inconveniences and can buzz right past the metal detectors.
Col. Mark McDonough, who flew combat missions for the U.S. Marines and now heads Public Safety, has a team of about 35 sworn officers keeping the peace in the People’s House.
If he had his druthers, he’d keep gun-toting civilians out of the place. If some emergency happened in the corridors and the good guys with guns started drawing down, then his troopers would have a helluva time deciding who was who. And he said he’d feel awful if one of his people shot the wrong guy.
And, of course, a legislator in a firefight is an untested ingredient in the never-ending theoretical public safety debate.
Last year, Wayne Garner, a former state senator who went on to become the prisons chief and is now a lobbyist, told me he was miffed at the 2014 bill allowing guns in government buildings.
At the time, he was mayor of Carrollton and didn’t like the thought of armed constituents coming to complain at city council meetings. You think people protesting misguided state legislation are worrisome? Try turning down someone’s rezoning request to build a multi-level chicken coop.
The 2014 law stated that cities and counties could keep guns from their complexes if they installed metal detectors and posted guards to man those entrances. It was public money Garner didn’t want to spend.
“There’s a little hypocrisy that they want guns in your environment but not in their own environment,” Garner said the other day. “They say the more guns make things safer. If that’s true, then why is it not true at the Capitol?”
“I don’t know why they are (passing the new law); I guess it’s dangerous there,” said Garner, who noted that he knows four legislators who are packing at any given time inside the Dome. Then he added, “I understand it. It’s politically popular.”
Actually, it may not be all that politically popular. A 2014 survey by Abt SRBI Inc. found that 78 percent of Georgians, and 71 percent of Republicans, opposed letting students carry guns on campus and in dorms. Legislators apparently heard that and “softened” the bill, which forbids guns in dorms, frats and at sporting events.
What could go wrong with guns, frat boys and a Bulldogs game?
I asked state Rep. Alan Powell, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, about the need for the newest gun bill.
“Today, you have active shooters, radicals — both domestic and foreign — thugs and criminals,” he said. “That’s why people carry.”
I noted crime has dropped drastically in the past 20 years. Statistically, the best ways to get yourself shot are to enter the crack trade on someone else’s turf or find yourself in the parking lot of a nightclub at 2 a.m. with someone else’s wife.
Stay out of those scenarios and your chances improve dramatically.
Powell acknowledged crime is down but said random stuff still happens. “And it’s your Second Amendment right,” he said.
Powell, who has a carry license, was a tad cagey when I asked if he’s packin’ while legislatin’.
“I prefer people not know what I do,” he said.
The gun bill is nothing new for for the representative of Hartwell, a suburb of South Carolina. In 1999, I wrote a story calling him the “Nick Danger of the General Assembly, the bearer of bills to keep fussy safety-proponents up at night.”
At the time he was fighting to ease penalties on teen super-speeders, weaken penalties for not wearing motorcycle helmets and reduce state restrictions on fireworks.
Some traditions do not change.
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