Guns In Bars — What Could Go Wrong?

by Stuart Shapiro

On most issues I like to think I understand the other side of the argument.  I may not agree with it but often I can find some merit in the opposing (usually conservative) position.  Gun control is an exception.  And with the recent Supreme Court decisions, gun laws are being weakened across the country.

Tennessee is one of four states, along with Arizona, Georgia and Virginia, that recently enacted laws explicitly allowing loaded guns in bars. (Eighteen other states allow weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol.) The new measures in Tennessee and the three other states come after two landmark Supreme Court rulings that citizens have an individual right — not just in connection with a well-regulated militia — to keep a loaded handgun for home defense.

I don’t get it.  Maybe it is growing up in 1970s and 1980s New York when there were 2000 murders a year.  Maybe it is an unfamiliarity with a hunting culture.  Or maybe it is an obsession with data that shows that countries with strict gun control laws have fewer murders than those without them.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.