The amount of thought going into this idea is self-evident:
Van Cleave said one proposed bill would allow no one but an on-duty officer doing undercover work to drink alcohol while carrying a concealed weapon. The other bill will say that anyone can carry a concealed gun and drink if they wish, “as long as they are not drunk.”
“Whatever the General Assembly assumes will apply to everyone,” he said. “Police officers and permit holders are all in the same tent; so I say: General Assembly, you choose. But whatever it is, we’re equal.”
If there was any way to make sure that these guys would be segregated and there would be no collateral damage inflicted on innocent citizens, I’d completely support the idea of gun nuts being allowed to drink while packing heat. Thinning the herd, if you will.
Yutsano
You know, for folks who say they hate trial lawyers so much, it makes me wonder why they are trying so hard to keep them in business for decades to come.
Phoenix Woman
The moron doesn’t realize that undercover cops in bars would blow their covers pretty damned quick if they weren’t allowed to kick back a brewski. But of course, he wants to get his NRA Merit Badge, so he doesn’t care how asinine he sounds.
beltane
This is a Darwin award just waiting to happen.
Next thing you know, they will mandate that you may only do shots of vodka while packing.
stuckinred
Ron Beasley
Social Darwinism at work.
khead
I’m just glad I live in Maryland where you have to be sober to shoot someone.
beltane
@stuckinred: Guns and airports are a really bad combination. The unsecured areas of the airport will not be unsecured for much longer.
Elisabeth
@stuckinred:
Question: “How are citizens safer by allowing firearms in airports?”
Answer: Citizen “militias”. And when someone “looks” like a a Muslim bad guy (is the t-word a bad word on Word Press?) that gun-toting fool will shoot him or her and get away with it in the name of national security. ‘Cause Obama’s coddling all the Muslims so we have to take care of them ourselves.
CK Dexter Haven
Guns, airport and airplane don’t really mix. Just wait till someone get onboard with a gun at Atlanta.
Or one of those loonies decide to hijack.No one could have predicted will be the answer.gbear
Who elects these morons?
jwb
@gbear: I’m afraid we do.
Joshua Norton
The only person stupider than some yahoo drinking while armed is someone who would go in a bar full of armed yahoos.
And what bartender is going to shut off someone who’s drunk and packing?
What could possibly go wrong?
Mnemosyne
@stuckinred:
Because the magical bubble that a gun creates around you will keep the Islamofascistcommieterrorists away. Everyone knows that.
/wingnut
And since gun threads tend to turn ugly fast, will the gun owners at least admit that letting intoxicated people wear guns in bars might not be the best idea?
Quiddity
This gun stuff is a fetish, pure and simple. What I find interesting is that these folks can’t rest until they can bring their guns anywhere, even to places that were deemed off-limits until recently:
churches
national parks
bars
airports
I’m pretty sure that hospital delivery rooms would prefer not to have someone packing heat show up, but if there was a prohibition of such action, the gun fanatics would raise holy hell until they could bring their pistol or rifle in with them.
Assertively going to location X with your gun strikes me as analogous to mammals pissing to mark their territory.
Yup, that’s exactly what it is.
(I know the pistol/penis parallel has been discussed before, and sometimes it’s overdone, but in this case – “territory marking” – it really fits.
demo woman
Nothing bad can happen with guns in the hands of drunks..Nah, didn’t think so. Maybe we can start a new group, Mothers against Drunks in Bars.
The GA legislatures have been debating carrying arms in airports and bars and at least our NRA members can drink while packing heat..
gbear
@Mnemosyne:
I wonder how much bars will have to jack up drink prices to cover their jacked up insurance rates? I wonder how many insurance companies will just refuse to insure bars? Seems like this could put a lot of bars out of business.
If I was still playing in a bar band, I’d find a new line of work.
Play Freebird or else…
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: Don’t lump all us gun owners together. I’m one, and I’ll say without hesitation that this is literally the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of in my life.
Joshua Norton
I wonder how many insurance companies will just refuse to insure bars?
Probably most of them. I had to get a one-night million dollar policy for a function that was serving liquor. They doubled the price when they found out we’d be serving hor’s d’oevres as well. I can’t imagine what the reaction would have been if guns were added to the mix. I mean they could barely handle pigs-in-a-blanket because of possible food issues. How are they going to handle pistol packin’ pigs in a bar?
demo woman
The GA legislature has also done some other interesting stuff besides guns in airports and bars and stuff, they lowered the tax on wealthy seniors while raising the tax on the poor.
In one of the last votes of the 2010 General Assembly session late Thursday, lawmakers eliminated a low-income tax credit for the poor. They also created a hospital bed tax so if you are ill, you get to pay more. That tax I think is a way of blaming Obama for the increased cost of getting sick but maybe I’m just being cynical.
The Moar You Know
@gbear: From my bar band days: It’s 1987, I’m just 21 and in my first paying gig, and I’m playing in a shitty bar in Ocean Beach (an unlovely beach community here in San Diego). Our guitar player’s cousin is there to see us. He is a probation officer, occasional jail guard, armed and a raging alcoholic.
Of course, this is the night we get the heckler.
After a few comments by the heckler, cousin waits for the band to finish the song (I assume for dramatic effect), pulls his weapon and jams it right in the guy’s nose.
He then pulls his badge, flashes it around, and yells “anybody else got anything they want to add to this conversation?”
We played the rest of the night to an empty bar, and it remains the only time that I’ve not been asked to return to an establishment.
Bob Kl
I’d like to go further than this. I think that going forward that legislation should be passed by fifty paces at dawn. Just think of what it would do for C-Span ratings (other than hot oil matches featuring Sarah Failin’, Shelly Turner Overdrive, Suzy Lowden, Lizzy Chaynee, Jenna & Baa Baa Bush Jr. – Not to mention Michelle Maltball & Mann Coulter) Can’t we all just have a paintball war to settle these things?
oklahomo
@Mnemosyne: As a gun owner, I can say that intoxicated people and guns don’t mix in any context. Nor can I see any reason to pack heat at the airport.
Perhaps a compromise: Sobriety locks on guns. Blow into the barrel and come up sober, trigger unlocks. Blow into the barrel and come up drunk, trigger deploys.
Just Some Fuckhead
Headlines seem to indicate intoxicated people are much more likely to shoot themselves than someone else. I wonder if there are any statistics because I could get behind this if the numbers are right.
hamletta
They passed a law allowing people to carry in bars here, too. Made me glad I’m no longer a bartender. That job just got 1000% more dangerous.
gbear
Are bars allowed to individually ban guns if they want to? When MN allowed conceal-carry, they permitted businesses and churches to post signs saying that weapons were not allowed in the building (and, by law, it had to be a big-assed, bluntly worded sign). Almost every store in the Twin Cities put up a sign immediately, and the big assed signs on every door were the first thing to greet visitors to the Mall of America.
Hamletta, where is ‘here’?
Svensker
At this point, I say let ’em drink and shoot each other. Sane people should boycott bars that allow carrying.
It really is too frigging depressing.
MTiffany
It’s never the gun nut herd that gets thinned.
Michael
@beltane:
Speaking from experience, I vote Mt. Gay Eclipse.
+7 (yes, the number is real)
Michael
@Quiddity:
Only total fags have to advertise that they carry in public. Real men who carry do it quietly, and don’t give a shit whether they have a permit or not.
Dee Loralei
@gbear: I think she’s in Nashvegas, TN.
But I’m just going from some hazy memory and not from any real knowledge of where she’s from. Or maybe she used to live in Nashville. But TN did just pass a conceal carry in bars and churches law.
gbear
@Michael: Michael, I realize it’s snark, but that’s some pretty weak shit.
D. Mason
The two places I can think of with the absolute most patrons drinking and carrying a concealed weapon are hunting clubs and whatever bar off-duty cops hang out at. Both seem pretty segregated as far as these things go.
Michael Scott
If you can’t get sloshed in an airport bar while packing heat, the terrorists win.
Besides, it’s not like people at airports are irritable, uncomfortable, or under stress, or anything. What could possibly go wrong?
Will the Krishnas be packing heat, too? This could get interesting.
smokescreen
AZ passed a similar law not too long ago (surprise, surprise). I asked the owner of a bar in Tucson about the signs he had over the door stating that his premises were weapon free, and whether the signs overruled the law – his answer was that yes, they did, and that he wouldn’t be able to insure his place at all without a posted no-firearms policy.
So these laws permitting carrying in bars don’t change a single thing: what’s more, the legislators dreaming them up probably know this. It’s basically an empty exercise in rhetoric and optics, at taxpayer expense.
Morbo
Everyone meet the newest spokesperson for Virginia’s tourism council: Plaxico Burress.
Yutsano
@Morbo: Win.
MikeTheZ
I am shocked no one has brought this up…
Plaxico. Burress.
Mumphrey
Well, I live in Virginia, and if this thing passes, I won’t be whiling away my time in bars any more. I can’t believe anybody would think this is worth doing. Just watch: even if people begin shooting each other all the time in bars, they still won’t repeal it.
Wile E. Quixote
@The Moar You Know:
Ditto, I’m a gun owner and I have not one, but two gun safes and usually have several thousand rounds of ammunition around the house (You save by buying in bulk and it’s not like it’s a dairy product or anything) and I think that alcohol and firearms together are not just incredibly fucking stupid, but land war in Asia* incredibly fucking stupid. Drunks? with guns? What could possibly go wrong?
About 20 years ago they passed a law like this in Washington state and the gun nuts had a total shit aneurysm** about it. My Dad, from whom I inherited an outlook that others have sometimes referred to, cruelly I might add, as nasty and cynical***, expressed a sentiment similar to Cole’s and said that he felt that they should have special gun bars that the gun nuts could go to. A gun bar would be just like a regular bar, except you would have to have a gun to get in, the walls would be made out of steel and concrete so that no bullets could get out and the drinks would be served through a slot from a bulletproof glass bar. He predicted that the gun bars would be popular for two or three years until their customer base eliminated itself.
What got me at the time was the bullshit hypotheticals that the gun nuts came up with to justify wanting to pack heat in a bar. I remember one of these idiots saying “Well, bars can be dangerous places and sometimes you’re in one and things get out of control and you might need a gun.” Now, I believe that if someone breaks into your house you should be able to blow them away, fuck ’em they’re violating your space and I’ve been to some seedy bars in my life, but never ones where I felt that I might need a gun, and if I did go into a bar where I felt so unsafe that I might need a gun my solution would be, to, well you know, leave.
Now, perhaps this means that I’m a weakling and a pussy and not a Real Man™ because I’m not willing to make that last stand at the Bad Mojo Lounge **** but I can’t imagine myself saying something like “Gee, I really love the ambiance at the Bad Mojo Lounge, and the bartender makes a mean Chocolate Choo-Choo and they always put ice in the urinals and nothing says ‘class’ like a freshly iced urinal, but you know, it’s kind of seedy and dangerous and there are some mean looking guys hanging around down there and the cops get called a lot because of fights and I really wish I could carry a gun when I go there, especially when they have Karaoke***** but I can’t because a bunch of bed-wetting crybaby liberals made it against the law!”
I mean for fuck’s sake, if you’re going to spin bullshit hypotheticals at least spin ones that are marginally interesting like, “I need a gun in the bar in case I’m attacked by escaped zoo animals. Escaped zoo animals that were exposed to nuclear waste and became radioactive zombie escaped zoo animals.” Or perhaps “I need to carry a gun in the bar because studies have shown that when people are kidnapped by aliens and anally probed that it often happens just as they’re leaving a bar. And if any little green space bastards ever beam me up to probe my poop-chute I’m going kill every single one of the little bastards!
*East or West
**I was going to say “up in arms” but it’s a lame pun and I like “shit aneurysm” better because of the pleasing and euphonious way it rolls off the tongue.
***I don’t see it myself. I’ve always thought of myself as being perky, occasionally bordering on sassy.
****There is a bar in Seattle called the Bad Juju Lounge, but I’ve never been there. This is the bar I frequent. The drinks are good (they make a fantastic bloody Mary) the food is great, the staff is courteous and efficient and no one has ever been shot there.
*****I can’t be the only person who’s wanted to bring a gun to a bar on Karaoke nights, not because of any safety issues but because you can only hear a drunks butcher Don’t Stop Believin a song so musically unchallenging that even Journey could sing it, so many times before you want to cap some motherfucker. I realized though that the solution here was to not go to Karaoke bars instead of saying “Gee, I really love the ambiance at the Bad Mojo Lounge and the bartender makes a mean Chocolate Choo-Choo and they always put ice in the urinals and nothing says ‘class’ like a freshly iced urinal, but you know, every once in a while some drunk motherfucker starts butchering Don’t Stop Believin a song so musically unchallenging that even Journey could sing it and I just want to cap the motherfucker!”
Wile E. Quixote
Damn! I’m in moderation. You know, I think that some smart-ass Democrat should attach a rider to one of these bills that allows people to bring alcohol to shooting ranges. I mean if you’re not going to let the government interfere with your ability to bring a gun into a place where a bunch of people are drinking then they shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with your ability to get drunk where a bunch of people are shooting.
asiangrrlMN
@Wile E. Quixote: Heh. I like the way you think.
I agree with the bars for gun-toters only. If people want to mix drinking and guns, then have it. Only, be as far away from me as possible, kithxbai.
DPirate
Is it now illegal or something? I wasn’t aware. If so, why, and is that why I’ve been in so many altercations in bars, because they knew I didnt have a gun?
Boney Baloney
Indoctrination, conflict-resolution training, and ruthless psychological screening make all the difference in the world. I’ve drunk myself stupid while armed to the teeth and behaved like a perfect gentleman every time — no quick-draw contests, no voiding my bowels unless seated on a toilet, no screaming “Fuck the Pope!” at the top of my lungs, you name it. Some people can’t handle their highs, and there’s an end on it.
Ultimately, the best people to go armed are the ones who consider it a form of punishment. “What the hell am I going to do with a pistol, if the shit hits the fan? Thanks a lot, sir.”
Meanwhile, people who want to go around armed will do it, and there’s not a lot you can do about it if they’re resourceful and well-informed about countermeasures. Or if they’re so very numerous that you’re wasting resources on entirely the wrong problem, which is more likely in the middle term.
P.S. The problem with Darwinian selection in human populations is that the wrong people die. See also “drunk drivers.” So you might as well stow that whack-off fantasy at the back of the closet right now, before you get too attached to it.