Nashville Food Blog

UPDATE: Per the request of the Tennessee Attorney General, Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman has rescheduled the "Guns in Bars" hearing from Tuesday, July 7 to Monday, July 13 at 1:30 p.m.

Author John Egerton, an esteemed observer and chronicler of Southern foodways, distributed this email this morning in reference to Randy Rayburn's last-ditch stand to thwart legislation allowing guns in bars:

Friends, when some of us met for supper at Second Harvest Food Bank one evening last winter, I had in mind several projects that we might pursue more productively by working together than we could by working as individuals or in small groups. At the time, I didn't imagine that one such project would be to stand in support of Tennessee restaurant and bar owners who don't want patrons bringing loaded guns into their places of business.

As you no doubt know, the Tennessee General Assembly recently passed a law allowing individuals with gun permits (about 225,000 state residents)
to eat (but not drink) while armed in any public restaurant or bar unless the establishment owner prominently posts a sign barring guns. The responsibility for monitoring who can legally enter and who cannot, who is armed and who is not, who can be served alcohol and who cannot, who needs police protection and who does not, rests entirely on the shoulders of the restaurant/bar owner.

Without consulting the hard-working people who must shoulder these responsibilities, the Republican-controlled legislature, with more than enough help from Democrats, passed the bill by a wide margin in both houses, and when Governor Bredesen vetoed it, he was decisively overridden, and the bill became law. It is scheduled to take effect on Tuesday, July 14. The national gun lobby, which is very strong in Tennessee, thus breezed to victory in our statehouse, where about one-fourth of the 133 lawmakers are themselves certified to carry loaded weapons almost anywhere they please.

Almost anywhere. But not in schools, colleges, universities. Not in courtrooms. Not in the House, the Senate, the Governor's Office or anywhere else in the State Capitol. What about at Little League games in public parks? That prospect is raised by another law the General Assembly just passed, allowing guns in parks. And what will happen henceforth when gun permit holders bring their loaded weapons with them to games of the Titans in Nashville and the Grizzlies in Memphis?

While the rest of us were wringing our hands about these developments, one restaurateur, Randy Rayburn of the Sunset Grill in Nashville, decided to take action. Yesterday, in Metro Chancery Court, he initiated a legal proceeding that seeks an injunction to halt implementation of the law until its constitutionality can be tested. A hearing on the injunction will take place next Tuesday, July 7, at 3 p.m., [See update above for correct time] in Courtroom 1 of Chancery Court, on the fourth floor of the Metro Courthouse. I hope that any of you who can make arrangements to be there will do so, and will invite others who are patrons and supporters of Tennessee restaurant owners to come with you. Randy and a handful of his friends have taken this public stand for all of us who resist the notion that a public show of citizen firepower is what we and the police need to keep us safe. The least we can do, as individuals and as an ad-hoc group of peaceable friends of good food, is to show up at the courthouse and show Randy we stand with him in opposition to that wrong-headed idea.

The Tennessean story about the lawsuit is patched in [here]. Please also note and check out the websites mentioned, plus one more:
http://gunfreerestaurants.wordpress.com/

Chow!

John