Denied a Chance: How gun control helped a stalker murder my husband by Goeser Nikki

Author:Goeser, Nikki [Goeser, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Feather Press
Published: 2013-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

On November 20, 2009 I sat in Chancellor Bonnyman’s courtroom in Davidson County Tennessee as the Restaurant Carry Law (that had now been in place for four months with no shootouts) was being challenged for being unconstitutionally vague. A group of restaurant owners in the very liberal part of Nashville, hired a team of slick attorneys to try and have the new law overturned. These restaurant owners didn’t like the new law and were hell bent on getting it overturned.

One of the restaurant owners who was always in front of a camera talking about the foolishness of the new law was a man by the name of “Richard.” Richard saw fit to yell at me in the courthouse when I tried calmly speaking with him about the importance of the law. One thing I have learned is, there are just certain people who cannot have a healthy, calm debate without a blood vessel popping out of their head and steam coming out of their ears. I can understand why Richard does not like this law, as I feel his temper may cause him not to trust himself if he were armed in public. It became apparent to me that Richard was most likely projecting his own “Ticking Time Bomb” personality onto others. I’m fine with Richard not carrying.

At first, the restaurant owners were kicking and screaming about it not being safe for employees and patrons. When they figured out that argument really would not work after OSHA released their statement that is was not a safety hazard, they then decided to come from an angle of being concerned for permit holders. How thoughtful of them right?!

The bill said you could carry a permitted handgun in any restaurant that serves alcohol but they must serve one meal a day, five days a week, with an adequate kitchen and staff. The argument was made that a permit holder would not be able to properly discern this simply by looking at an establishment from the street and walking in. If they walked in and the restaurant did not fall within these guidelines, the permit holder would be breaking the law without even knowing it.

The group of restaurant owners filing the lawsuit got a group of people they knew who had permits (who remained anonymous of course) to state they were afraid they might break the law because the new law was just too vague.

The law was overturned that day in court and deemed unconstitutionally vague. This day was what would have been my husband’s 50th birthday. I thought about Ben through the whole trial. I was pretty down after the verdict as myself and many others had fought hard for the passage of that law. It was back to the drawing board for our legislators. The bill was re-drafted to remove any vagueness and boy did they ever remove it.

The new bill opened up permitted carry TO ANY establishment that serves alcohol. Period. It ended up passing and the law was back in place by July 2010.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.