Dick Yarbrough
While getting our financial priorities rearranged, Seabaugh is also touting his Common Sense Lawful Carry Act, co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) which would allow guns to be lawfully carried into places like shopping centers, parks and public transportation by people who may or may not have common sense. Guns won't be allowed on college campuses but you will be able to get close enough to make a lot of people nervous. Restaurants, bars, churches and other private property owners would have the right to decide if they want people with permits to carry guns on their premises. Uh, why this bill and why now?
Might this not be the worst-timed piece of legislation to bumble through the state senate this session? It certainly rivals the one our senators passed a few weeks ago that says we can't get tracking devices implanted in our bodies without our permission and accidentally tip off the Martians.
As Marietta Daily Journal columnist Don McKee opined recently, "Balancing the budget should be the priority of all members of the General Assembly: where to cut, how to cut, how deep to cut as well as whether to increase tobacco taxes and end tax holidays. And maybe even close loopholes and eliminate assorted tax breaks. But here we have Sen. Mitch Seabaugh, Republican whip in the Senate, whipping up support for a bill to expand gun-carrying rights all over the landscape."
Veteran state political observer Tom Crawford is a little less circumspect, saying the bill "is located about as far from common sense as you can be and still remain within the confines of the Milky Way galaxy. It is full-blown, skull-bending craziness."
Seabaugh says church pastors would have discretion to choose who would be allowed to carry guns into their sanctuaries. One newspaper reported that "throughout the months-long debates, several pastors testified that they felt they needed the protection that guns would afford."
I hope Dr. Gil Watson, the World's Greatest Preacher, was not among that group pushing to pack a pistol. In the first place, he doesn't know one end of a gun from the other and would probably blow a hole in the pipe organ if he could locate the trigger. In the second place, it is a proven fact that God likes Dr. Gil better than He does the rest of us. That is why God has let it rain so much since Gov. Perdue asked Dr. Gil to pray for an end to our drought a couple of years ago. When you've got God on your side, why do you need a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 380 with integrated laser sight? Pardon the pun, but isn't that overkill?
Perhaps Dr. Gil is concerned that I am going to take offense at his preaching about my sins every Sunday and that I will show up with my trusty pump-action Daisy Red Ryder BB gun with camouflage stock. If he is worried about that, he needs to interview the squirrels in my back yard first. The worst damage I have done so far is to have a couple of the critters die laughing at me and my attempts to shoot them. Squirrels can be very cruel.
Call me na ve but I would prefer that our legislators spend their time seeing that the money owed us by tax cheats is collected, tightening up our ethics laws and developing a cohesive public education policy rather than trying to figure out who is eligible to carry a .44 Magnum into Macy's and cutting the number of judges that might rule on that question down the road.
More guns. Less judges. Is this state a well-oiled machine or what?
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.
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Seems to me we need to think about what money should be spent on by government. At the basics, I think we need education and safety.
Education is already in trouble with state cuts in funding over the past years. With this years budget cuts, are we not beginning to cut bone and not just fat? Atlanta area school systems are all talking major reductions in student/teacher ratio, closing schools, cutting teacher pay.
And the college system? I would like to see everyone who makes more than $200,000 agree to limit their pay. It may not save much but it would be a powerful message to students and their parents that they are willing to sacrifice with the rest of us.
Other than that, it is important that an educational system paid for with tax dollars of all of us be available to all of us. Raising college tuition and fees beyond inflation rates just means that we are limiting education to higher income people. If low tuition is "socialism", as one not-so-bright politician said, raising it too much is, what, feudalism?
On safety, we need the protection of policemen, firemen, and the courts. Are we cutting fat or bone? Senator Seabaugh seems more concerned with just cutting than with evaluating need. I also think water and sewer systems are part of public safety.
So, in the midst of a devastating economic crash, why are our politicians worried about guns?
An aside. You would think that all these politicians who throw around the word "socialism" would consider that we practice a lot of socialism that they like. Such as richer counties having a portion of their school tax dollars sent to poorer counties. Such as all the cell phone users being taxed to assure rural counties have cell phone service. Or, such as the farm subsidies that Chambliss is trying to keep on coming to farmers in Georgia. All those are a form of socialism. Why not universal health care?