Muggs archive

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Under fire: New law allowing guns in bars perturbs many

The ugly headline notwithstanding, Jason's exploration of opinions in bars ahead of implementation of the new booze-and-bullets law is at least the sort of exercise in journalism that the paper so sorely lacks. I'm not wild about the style, of course, mixing weak and often pointless quotes from random people with a few facts to give it some humint.

The facts are limited to the provisions of the law, leaving out, say, lawnforcement assessments of its likely effects (or assurances that there won't be any), or how the bouncers who will have to physically deal with these newly empowered gun-toters feel about it. But a little is better than nothing from the Courier.

That 41 states also allow this indicates that public opinion is at least neutral and the effects aren't huge, OK. But we have to admit that it's also an indication of the sort of people that Americans want to be and the sort of society they want to live in.

I wonder whether anyone's done a study on how many skilled professionals have emigrated elsewhere in the world because of our collective idiocy about guns.

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