Tennessee authorizes gun permit holders to carry weapons in restaurants---big deal.

Tennessee has changed the law to authorize concealed carry permit holders to exercise their right to carry in restaurants.

Everybody is up in arms about this---to a ridiculous degree.

Even a Nashville restaurant owner has gotten in the act by suing to have the law declared unconstitutional.

My reading of the State Constitution at Article I, Sect. 26 tells me the lawsuit won't succeed. The legislature has plenary power to make laws related to the right to bear arms. They've done so here.

Here's why I think it's a tempest in a teapot: Nothing in the law requires a restaurant owner to admit anyone who carries a gun. The law only authorizes those with a permit to carry it in a restaurant.

Randy Rayburn needs to take a chill pill and just put up a sign on his door that reads: No Guns Allowed.

If he does so, the law will back him up if he wants to throw someone out. Simple enough.

Instead, everybody has to go all ape-shit over nothing just for press attention. Makes me sick.

I support the 2nd Amendment, but I also support the right of restaurant owners to bar those who wish to pack heat too. This law doesn't interfere with either right.

NRA has managed to flex its Republican muscle against a gun company apostate

I refer you to the most previous post for background when looking at this stunning display of ideological stupidity.

Cooper Firearms has fired its eponymously named founder Dan Cooper for supporting Obama for President.

I see this as a tacit, if not blatant, acknowledgment by the firearm manufacturer that a significant portion of their customers are wingnuts.

Unfortunately, the gun lobby, and by this I mean the NRA, has bought into the notion that only Republicans support the 2nd Amendment. In defiance of reason and with the result of alienating a significant portion of the electorate. The Republican Party doesn't have the market cornered on support for 2nd Amendment rights. The NRA and the Republican party would like everyone to think that's the case, but that isn't true. You can favor the 2nd Amendment AND also favor a Woman's Right to Choose. It's all about freedom of choice.

Now, before all you gun nuts or NRA whackjobs get your panties in a wad and accuse me of wanting to take away your guns, let me disabuse you of that notion right here.

I hate the NRA, but I love the 2nd Amendment. Supporting one doesn't require that I support the other. Don't fall for the simple-minded absolutism marketed by the Right that only Conservatives and Republicans favor and will protect Gun Rights. That's complete bull.

I got flack for supporting the 2nd Amendment rights of if the DC security guard who successfully won the right to possess a gun in DC in the Heller case.

The NRA gives real gun owners a bad name. The NRA is nothing but a Republican lobby masquerading as a Rights Group.

I don't like the NRA and I don't agree with their political positions. Yet, I think the Constitution gives citizens the right to keep and bear arms. I own guns. Mere gun ownership doesn't turn anyone into a bad person.

In fact, I think the 2nd Amendment gives me the right to own pretty much any gun I want, including Assault Rifles. Extreme? Maybe, but the 2nd Amendment says what it says and the U.S. has historically viewed gun ownership rather liberally.

So, where do I fit?

I don't fit with the NRA because they are idiots with an ideological zeal that undermines all rationality; I cannot align myself with idiocy over a single issue.

If the NRA would open their minds (won't happen because that requires actual thinking...), those of us with a more expansive view of individual rights wouldn't feel so alienated by the moronic rank and file catered to by such small-mindedness.

Cooper Firearms sold their soul to a Right Wing idiocy group. Terminating their CEO for the reasons they cite is un-American. I won't buy any of their guns now that I know how un-American their board is.

Buy true American...Support ALL the Contitution.