"How to Understand Georgia's 'Guns Everywhere' Law"

How to Understand Georgia's 'Guns Everywhere' Law: Four Blunt Points - Businessweek:
 (March 25, 2014)

Georgia appears poised to enact a so-called guns-everywhere law, making it easier for firearm permit holders to take their weapons into bars, churches, and even airports. Approved last week by the state legislature, the bill awaits the signature of Republican Governor Nathan Deal, a strong gun-rights advocate up for reelection this fall. His opponent, Jason Carter, a Democratic state senator and grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, voted for the legislation, so enactment seems assured. Non-gun owners doubtless find all this baffling. Here are four blunt points to sort out what’s going on and how to respond:

 May we point out, before we get into the details, that this is Bloomberg BusinessWeek?
So before fisking the "blunt points, understand that this is from Michael Bloomberg's mouth to BusinessWeek's ear.

So when he says "Points", he's actually providing "Talking Points" so that his minions know the  Party Line.

Non-gun owners doubtless find all this baffling. Here are four blunt points to sort out what’s going on and how to respond:

1. The Newtown school massacre led to “guns everywhere.” Perverse as it may sound, the horrific mass shooting in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary produced a burst of state-level gun control bills around the country and then triggered a much stronger pro-gun backlash. The counter-reaction has now reached its apogee in Georgia. In the past year alone, 21 states have enacted laws expanding gun rights, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Several states added piecemeal provisions allowing firearms on college campuses or in bars or churches. Georgia’s politicians, egged on by the National Rifle Association, have gone for broke.

Translation:  The NRA is Evil!   This is all their fault.  No sane politician would support this kind of action.  This is the fault of the NRA: they egged them on!  Just ask the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence* ... they wouldn't lie to you like the NRA does.  And they would never "egg you on".  (Despicable!  Ptewie!)

*(Note: the LCPGV is a non-profit (all of your donations are tax-free) organization created and run by lawyers in San Francisco)

2. Georgia illustrates the NRA’s structural advantage on gun control. As if we needed a fresh demonstration of this phenomenon, the gun-rights lobby currently enjoys a fundamental edge in the debate about regulating firearms. In an era of falling crime
rates, liberal enthusiasm for gun control simply doesn’t pack much political punch outside certain blue-state environments. Yes, people get riled up, understandably, by mass shootings at schools or movie theaters. Over and over, we’ve seen those emotions fade quickly, giving way to a more sustained counter-reaction from the pro-gun side. The NRA has skillfully responded to calls for stricter gun control by portraying them as evidence that liberals’ real agenda is confiscating firearms—all firearms.

 Translation:   The NRA is Evil!   They have an unfair advantage, because they use arguments which are logic-based instead of emotion-based, like Nice People do.  Oh, and they use Scare Tactics, too.  That's OUR job!

3. Skeptics of expansive gun rights need to respond intelligently. The smart response is not scorn or exaggeration. For better or worse, gun ownership has come to symbolize a range of deeply felt ideas about culture and government authority. Making fun of people who view their firearms as emblems of liberty and traditional values (however they define those values) will neither change minds nor repeal legislation.

Translation:  We know you, our Faithful, are dedicated to the proposition that All Guns Are Created Evil. and you are outraged that anyone should question you.    And you should be .. you are right and they are wrong.  Still, it is outrageous of honest Liberal Americans to spit when telling Gun Fanatics to leave your private public rally because "we don't wancha there".  So ... keep up the good work, but tone it down.  Remember, these people may carry guns and an armed society is a polite society.  Or else!

But while you should not criticize their dedication to their so-called 'cause', it's okay to to denegrate their believes in the so-called "Second Amendment".  Their constitutional freedoms are not as clean as our constitutional freedoms.  The NRA is EVIL!  They like guns, and we don't.   They are wrong and we are right.  The Constitution is a "Living Document", subject to change according to my .. er, "our" changes in cultural attitude, and anybody who says otherwise is an Ignorant Redneck clinging to their Guns and their God.  Barry says so!  Geez, who needs them?

4. The best response to gun-rights extremism is a focus on fighting crime. Rather than engage with the NRA on the cultural battlefield, where gun-rights advocates have the upper hand, liberals should focus on the most-pressing problem related to firearms—that their prevalence in American society makes our violent crime more lethal. Broadly speaking, this approach would have liberals emphasize more aggressive enforcement of existing laws against illegal gun possession, rather than obsess about situations that allow law-abiding citizens to own guns and carry them on their person. Still speaking broadly, the anti-crime approach would have liberals ask how the extraordinary successes in reducing violent crime in places like New York—where gun control laws have not changed for decades—can be replicated elsewhere.

 Translation:  Okay, this is a tough one.  We're all Crime Fighters.  And even though we have no idea how to Fight Crime (other than blowing a whistle, or perhaps just carrying a wallet with only $5 in it so we have something to placate the muggers in Times Square), consider this your Validation For The Day.  Hang in there, Buffy, we will win this fight because our cause is just and we are Good People.  Forgive them their ignorance.  Just ... don't engage them in anything that seems like a "dialogue", okay?  We don't want them to pollute your purity with their satanic rituals of public discourse.

The NRA is Evil!   That is all thee knowest, and all thee needeth to knoweth.   Righteth?  Who needs Righteth when you have Michael the Billionaire fighting you from the trenches of his New York Penthouse!

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Whew! It's hard to argue with sound, logical reasoning such as has been displayed here by Michael Bloom ... uh ....  BusinessWeek!

One more thing, though.  On Page 2:

Turning back to Georgia, this mindset would inspire guns-everywhere skeptics (and if you can’t tell by now, I am one) to focus on those provisions of the law that appear to be soft on crime and criminals. For example, the statute would provide more leeway for gun owners to escape punishment if they try to go through airport security while armed. That seems dangerous. We’ve decided as a society that we don’t want guns on airplanes. This security requirement doesn’t seem terribly difficult to remember, what with all the people in uniform at the airport and all those screening machines and long lines and having to take off your shoes, for goodness’s sake.

Well, yes.  You got me there.  I mean, Liberals know that they're going to be searched and screened and have to take off their shoes for goodness's sake before they can get on an airplane.  Only a madman would attempt to smuggle on an Evil Gun knowing all of the well-publicized security measures currently in effect at airports all over this great (if full of ignorant gun-owners who are honest and well-meaning but still not Liberals but not worthy of Justice) land of ours.

So if anyone tries to board a plane with a gun, let's fall back on the proven "Zero Tolerance" policies which have worked so well for our brethren in public schools.  Nothing has proved so effective in turning innocents into felons in a single moment of inattention.  Ruin their lives?  Well, yes, it does do that.

But if their lives were worth preserving, they would be voting Democrat!

Never forget; Never forgive.

Michael Bloomb ... uh, I mean BusinessWeek signing off.