January 06, 2010 Jake Hallman

    I can legally carry a concealed gun into any bar in Statesboro.
    I can do this for two reasons. First, I have a Georgia Firearms Permit (GFP). Second, technically speaking, Statesboro doesn’t have bars, just restaurants that make at least 50 percent of their revenue from food. Because of that, it’s legal in Georgia to be strapped inside if you’ve got a license.
    I’m not the only person, either. Lots of folks hereabouts have their GFP. And there’s talk in the state legislature of loosening the existing laws of where you can carry a gun, allowing licensees to carry in school zones, churches and college campuses.
    As a gun-totin’ liberal, I’m fine with expanding the number of places GFP holders can be packing. To a point.
    And that point is that it’s just too damned easy in Georgia to get a gun license. Got $50, a clean record and don’t mind being fingerprinted? You’re good to go. Compare that with, say, the process of getting a driver’s license. Or a hunting license.
    Surely there’s some logic there. If you want to go out in the woods with a gun to hunt, the state has an interest in making sure you aren’t a danger to anyone but Bambi. If you get out on the road, the state has an interest in making sure you can show at least some level of competency behind a ton of steel, rubber and plastic hurtling along at 65-plus miles per hour.
    Yet the state is perfectly happy to let anybody with $50 (varies by location) and a clean record carry deadly hidden weaponry to Wal-Mart. And they’re talking about expanding that right.
    As it stands right now, someone who’s never fired a gun in their life can go get a GFP, wait a couple of weeks for it to come in, then stop by a gun store, buy whatever artillery they want, drop it in a holster and carry it all kinds of places legally.
    I’m a fan of the Second Amendment, but I’m also a big fan of common sense. Georgia’s gun laws don’t work right, and adding to the places you can carry weapons is only going to make things worse.
    …Unless we apply some common sense (I’m a fan of that, too). It’s time to follow the example of states like Texas and Tennessee and require that anyone licensed to carry concealed actually show that they can use their weapon and get some education in basic gun handling and safety.
    Guns aren’t toys. They aren’t easy to use correctly, and they’re incredibly deadly in uneducated hands. The state has a responsibility to make sure that anyone who’s carrying a hidden gun understands all of that.
    So I approached a couple of prominent Republican state legislators with my idea. I even couched it in terms of “Wanna expand gun rights? This’ll mollify my fellow Democrats who are gun-phobic and maybe even make some money for the state.”
    Their reaction was decidedly lukewarm. One didn’t seem to understand exactly how the current firearms laws work. He suggested that a lot of people with GFPs (more than 300,000 at last count) would only have their guns in the home. I disagreed – you don’t need a license in Georgia to carry a gun at home, in your car or at your business. The only reason to get a GFP is to carry elsewhere.
    The other legislator said that my proposed requirements would interfere with peoples’ right to bear arms, and that he’d have to see it in a bill before he took a position. The guy’s been a state legislator for 30 years. I’d hope that he could, I dunno, maybe influence lawmaking slightly.
    And maybe I’m expecting too much from the Georgia Legislature as a whole. They’ve been spending most of their time the past couple of years making sure the boat doesn’t crash into the rocks, much less taking us on a pleasure cruise.
    But the idea makes sense – I’m all for allowing the average Joe to have and carry a gun, but it’d be ludicrous to argue that if we don’t make sure they actually know how to use those guns, it’s infringing on Second Amendment rights.
    Maybe Georgia’s lawmakers will show some sense, too.

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