Sunday, June 07, 2009 | News, In this Issue...
SP Gun Loving Sons-of-Guns

How different is Georgia’s attitude about guns from those of other states?

Local gun store Tucker Gun’s Glock kiosk.
Spark St. Jude

By Chuck Stanley

In the final days of Georgia’s most recent legislative session, the state Senate issued a resolution affirming, in part, that “further infringements [by the federal government] on the right to keep and bear arms” would “constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America.”

In other words, if the United States Congress passes gun-control legislation overriding Georgia’s relatively lax regulations, the state Senate is prepared to see Georgia secede from the union.

This is roughly the same nullification argument that helped catapult the nation into civil war during the 19th century. What the senators who passed this resolution hope to accomplish by resuscitating the idea of nullification is unclear. What is clear, though, is Georgia’s seriousness about allowing its citizens to pack heat.

While gun-control advocates bemoan Georgia’s lack of gun regulation, some politicians in the state are convinced that our current gun laws are too oppressive. Rep. Tim Bearden (R-Villa Rica), who sponsored last year’s gun legislation allowing firearms in restaurants and state parks, this year sponsored what would be the most sweeping gun legislation to hit the state in decades.

If passed, House Bill 615 would allow concealed weapons at public gatherings and bars, provide for the issuance of lifetime conceal-and-carry permits, and prohibit any representative of the state from seizing or limiting the sale of firearms during a state of emergency. Although the bill did not make it to a vote in the recent legislative session, Bearden hopes to reintroduce it when the House reconvenes.

Considering the recent talk of nullification coming from the General Assembly, the language protecting gun owners during a state of emergency may conjure images of Georgia residents in an armed uprising, possibly in response to gun-control legislation, against their government. Bearden, however, says his concern over gun rights during a state of emergency grew from the response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

“Law enforcement officers were out there taking firearms away from law-abiding citizens,” Bearden says. “In a federal emergency, that is when you need your firearms the most.”

In addition to his stance that guns should be allowed nearly anywhere in the state, and under any circumstances, Bearden opposes laws that support tracking guns used in crime with minimal inconvenience to law-abiding gun owners. One such measure, ammunition coding, would make it easier for law enforcement to trace the origin of bullets fired during the commission of a crime.

“It’s tracking a person who’s doing something that’s lawful,” he says of ammunition coding. “We’re trying to punish law-abiding citizens for the actions of criminals, and that is not the way to do things.”

Bearden says he supports the state Senate’s statement against federal action on gun control, and was a proponent of similar resolutions from the House.

“The folks on the federal level,” he says, “need to take a little bit of time and read the Constitution, I think, because they have totally lost all sense of reality when it comes to the Second Amendment.”

GEORGIA LAGS IN REGULATION


Doug Pennington, with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, finds it curious when gun-rights supporters rail against federal gun-control measures, considering how few such measures there are.

“What people don’t realize, at the national level, at least, is that I can count the federal gun laws on the books on one hand. I don’t even need all five fingers to do it,” he says, quickly rattling off the 1934 ban on machine guns, the Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibiting gun sales to felons, and the Brady Law, which requires licensed gun dealers to perform criminal background checks.

“There are so few [federal laws] to evade in the first place,” he says. “What are you going to do in the state of Georgia, not run a criminal background check on people?”

The lack of federal regulation leaves individual states largely on their own when it comes to legislating gun sales. In Georgia’s case, that means very little control. Georgia currently sits in the bottom third of a yearly report released by the Brady Campaign, earning seven points out of 100 for legislation aimed at preventing gun violence. Georgia cracked the bottom third last year when Governor Perdue signed legislation preventing employers from forbidding guns in business parking lots and allowing concealed weapons to be carried on public transit and in restaurants.

Georgia’s ranking, tied for 33rd with Kansas and Tennessee, places it among the least regulated states in the nation when it comes to guns. In some ways, says Pennington, Georgia is even worse than the company it keeps on the yearly scorecard.

“At least the state of Texas [for example] requires 10 hours of training before you can get a conceal-and-carry permit,” he says.

The lack of effort to regulate gun sales in Georgia has effects beyond the state line. Georgia’s absence of restrictions on bulk purchases and universal background checks facilitate what is called the “iron pipeline,” where guns bought in bulk from Southern states are transported and sold in states with tougher gun laws. In 2007, the Brady Center identified Georgia as the leading source of recovered guns used in crimes in the United States.

Pennington, speaking on a day when a bill aimed at limiting credit card issuance passed through the U.S. Congress despite a tacked-on clause allowing guns to be carried in national parks, believes that with the proper safeguards, America can drastically reduce gun violence while respecting the Second Amendment. We know how to do this, says Pennington. We simply have to enforce the laws.

“Guns aren’t heroin,” he says. “Heroin is immediately illegal, as soon as it’s created. But guns are a legal product. … States like Georgia really don’t care about how guns end up going from licensed gun dealers into the hands of gun traffickers and into the hands of criminals.” SP