Objective reporting

No, really!

Here is a good story in the Nashville city paper on Belle Meade, TN's carry law: (emphasis mine)

A Belle Meade gun law, which the mayor called inappropriate and discriminatory, could soon be updated.

The city’s board of commissioners is floating two proposed ordinances looking to either amend or delete a section of code that prohibits anyone to carry a dangerous weapon “with the intent to go armed” except for an “Army or Navy pistol which shall be carried openly in the hand.”

It’s the second phrase in particular that the board stated harkened back to the Reconstruction Era.

In a March 25 message to residents posted on the city’s website, the board stated the ordinance’s language appeared to be intended to restrict free blacks from owning handguns after the Civil War because mostly white men owned Army and Navy pistols.

Racist roots of gun control, indeed.

There is a little part that concerns me, however:

That prompted Belle Meade commissioners to look into the law and propose an ordinance that would amend the law, removing the phrase “except the Army or Navy pistol which shall be carried openly in the hand.”

Doing this, of course, would still prevent people from carrying a gun with the "intent to go armed" (why else would someone carry a gun?), it would just apply to white folk now. Or something.

But, it appears clearer heads prevailed:

Last week, the Belle Meade board of commissioners passed on first reading an ordinance that would delete the entire section of city code (Title 11-602.)

There ye go.

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