This Just In-Nothing Still Happening

Well, alright, I admit this came out on Friday, and it is now Sunday, but the news still needs to get out: after a year with having concealed carry of firearms in restaurants that serve alcohol, nothing much has happened. The Columbus Dispatch has the story by Alan Johnson here. The anti-gun Cleveland Plain Dealer's snarky article entitled Letting Guns into Ohio's Bars would be an outrage was typical of what passed as coverage before the law went into effect.  You can read it for yourself.   The article is long on sarcasm, and short on actual facts.

Like Virginia last year, once again a State has passed carry in restaurants that serve alcohol, and nothing happened.  No shoot outs among the chairs and aisles, no blood on the floors, no wild west scenes, no dead children.  Nothing.

So, you might wonder, what causes the North Carolina legislature to fear concealed carriers having their guns in restaurants while they dine with their families? It seems that Senator Tom Apadoca had the power, in conjunction with Senate Leadership, Phil Berger to kill this common sense law for us again.  But what seems to be scaring them so badly?  Do they believe that those living in our fair state are somehow more violence prone than those living in 42 other states?  Perhaps it is the Fraternal Order of Police, a hypocritical group that seems to believe in guns for themselves, but not for civilians.  It couldn't be newspapers like the Winston Salem Journal that claim that guns and alcohol don't mix could it?  After all, the proposed bill didn't allow alcohol and guns to mix.  Indeed, the the proposed bill actually forbade it.  But setting up strawmen in order to knock them down seems to be a specialty of the Winston Salem Journal.

It remains to be seen whether pro-gun rights forces can increase their numbers in the November elections, and whether North Carolina will join states like Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and of course Ohio in having concealed carry in restaurants that serve alcohol.