Handgun Bill Takes U-Turn

A bill to allow people to carry handguns in state parks did a screaming U-turn in the state Senate today, when it was amended to allow guns to be brought into the state capitol complex.

Senator Tim Burchett’s bill would have allowed people with concealed carry permits to take their weapons into parks. Currently such access is denied – just as the State Capitol and the Legislative Plaza office buildings are off-limits even to legal permit holders.

Burchett says he opposes the amendment, which would mean concealed handguns could be carried onto the legislature’s home turf. He says it would create new costs.

“I guarantee that you’ll have to hire additional personnel, because everybody will have to, if they go through the metal detector and it goes off, of course, which it will if they’re carrying a firearm, they’ll have to pull uh … I’m sure there will have to be a staging area off to the side. You’ll have to have trained personnel to check the firearms, and then the permit. I really don’t want it to extend the scope of the bill; I just want it to be in parks.”

Burchett says he discounts testimony from the Commissioner of Environment that the bill would create similar problems in the parks.

But amendment sponsor Jim Kyle says the argument to allow guns in parks is no more reasonable than to allow guns in state legislators’ offices.

“The Commissioner testified there’s 55 million visitors in the parks in the last two years, and they had 12 criminal instances … not serious criminal instances. That means those parks are safer than most of the streets in Memphis, Tennessee.”

Kyle is a Democrat from Memphis. With his help, the bill was referred back to the Senate Judiciary committee and will be heard next week.

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Burchett says the argument by the commissioner of the Department of Environment and Conversation is just passed down from the governor’s office…

“But I don’t see any shape, form or fashion how that would create enforcement problems, I just don’t. That just doesn’t ring true. He’s just the mouthpiece for the administration, basically. And I doubt if he has a handgun permit, and that’s fine … but I just don’t see that as a valid argument.”