Tag: gun control

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News The Fly-By

Week That Was: Greensward, Guns, and Wine

Mayor on Greensward

• Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland proposed to permanently end Greensward parking in a proposal issued last week after the mediation deadline passed between the Memphis Zoo and the Overton Park Conservancy (OPC).

Even though mediation did not yield an agreement, Strickland said his plan is a by-product of the mediation talks.

The final decision on the plan, though, will fall to the Memphis City Council, which was slated to vote on the matter Tuesday. However, council chairman Kemp Conrad, who said he supports the mayor’s plan, said he will ask his fellow council members to delay the vote for two weeks.

Strickland’s proposal includes reconfiguring parking spaces on the zoo’s existing lots, adding 100 spaces on the now-wooded north end of the Greensward, building a berm around the Greensward to block views of zoo parking, adding a new zoo entrance on North Parkway, building a new parking lot on what is now the city’s General Services area, and running shuttles form the lot to the zoo on city streets.

OPC was in favor of the mayor’s plan. But zoo president Chuck Brady called the plan “disappointing” and said that he wanted to “maintain the status quo.”

Wine in Grocery Stores

• On Friday, wine flowed from the shelves of Tennessee grocery stores for the first time.

Wine sales began after a nine-year battle in the Tennessee General Assembly. Tennessee is now one of 40 states that allow wine sales in grocery stores. No other state has changed laws to allow wine sales in grocery stores in the past 24 years.

Liquor store owners have long expected their businesses to take a financial hit as one of their main (and exclusive) products can now be found at the local grocery store. The legislature gave liquor store owners a one-year head start on the change, allowing them to expand their offerings with beer, mixers, light food, and more.

While it’s too early to call wine sales in grocery stores a success (sales are barely a week old), many industry insiders predicted it would be a massive surge in the wine business overall.

Guns on Campus

• Beginning last Friday, registered full-time employees of Tennessee’s public universities were allowed to carry concealed handguns on school grounds.

State lawmakers passed the bill to allow full-time employees to carry handguns on public university campuses in May. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam expressed concern about the legislation but allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

The University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee (UT) Health Science Center began registering employees who wish to carry on campus last week. Leaders of the Tennessee Board of Regents and the UT system opposed the legislation.

No Easy Answers on Gun Violence

• Congressmen Steve Cohen assembled a panel in Memphis last week to discuss curbing gun violence, after several gun-control bills failed in Washington last month.

Panelists and members of the audience suggested tougher penalties for those illegally carrying guns, “common-sense” background checks for anyone wishing to buy a gun, and ending gun sales to several groups, including those on the federal no-fly list.

“There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of guns [in Memphis],” said Memphis Police Department Deputy Director Mike Ryall. “The access to guns is so easy that it’s a constant feeding machine. We need to look into how guns get in the hands of bad people.”

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said …

About the Flyer‘s 25th Anniversary issue …

It took me the entire week to read the 25th Anniversary issue because it was so chock full of interesting historical tidbits and people. I’ve been a fan of the Flyer since the first issue and still have fond memories of the party thrown to celebrate its first year. One question about the cover photograph: Can you give me a guide to who everyone is?

Corey Mesler

Editor’s note: Clockwise from top: Murry Keith, an unidentified model from the issue’s swimsuit shoot, Susan Alexander, Rhonda Jones, John Finch, Linda Lockwood, Jo Wagoner Bracey

About Jackson Baker’s Politics column on judicial elections …

Jackson Baker’s column about the judicial candidates and their sad but necessary attempts to “campaign” for election brought back painful memories. I was in the same position in 1982, one of the scores of candidates given five minutes to convince an indifferent audience (made up mostly of other candidates) that I stood out from the crowd, without promising anything they cared about. We were happy to find any group, including Alcoholics Anonymous, willing to listen to us.

It would certainly be helpful if the Flyer and The Commercial Appeal would print a profile of each candidate, both the good and the bad. After all, as Baker pointed out, the winners will have power over our lives and property.

Robert A. Lanier

Editor’s Note: As a public service, the Flyer will be publishing the Memphis Bar Association’s recommendations in a July issue.

A solution for the country’s gun problems …

Here goes my gun solution: I used to say put all the Tea Party people in Alabama, like a reservation. After more consideration, I’ve decided we need to put all the NRA people, all the Tea Party people, and all the people who need guns at their sides at all times in Texas. Just give them their own little part of the universe, like a reservation. They can have all their guns and shoot everybody they want. Take their guns into the bathroom while they take a dump.

The rest of the country would have gun clubs. People who like to shoot could keep their guns at a gun club and go there to socialize and shoot at targets. It could be fun — no one getting killed but still enjoying their guns. One would still need to pass a background check and guns could only be purchased at the clubs, so a gun store would have to be a gun club. No guns leave the club.

Dagmar Bergen

About Addison Engelking’s survey of the best Southern films since 1989 …

Well you missed the most Southern of Southern films, and the best. I never tire of watching Fried Green Tomatoes.

Brunetto Latini

Haven’t seen all these, but I laughed out loud at the horrible cliches of Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan. Loved what one critic called it “Chaining Miss Daisy to the Radiator.” Not on my list, unless it’s on the 25 Worst.

Mayfield

Mayfield, I think you may have had the response the director wanted you to have in those moments. BSM was calculated drive-in bad. Not anybody’s fault for missing that; it had identity issues. It was shot so lovingly, it makes you forget what the poster tells you: Don’t analyze too much, it’s pulp for pulp’s sake. I have lots of problems with it too, but the Eggleston homages are really nice, and the one post-party ultra-low-angle shot captures all-night party wasted better than any other depiction of alcoholism I’ve ever seen on film. Those moments smooth over some of the rest for me.

Chris Davis

About Stacey Greenberg’s article, “Some of the Best Nachos in Memphis” …

I think I had different expectations for this article. Thanks for sharing some places I would have never thought to try the nachos.

Caz

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Editorial Opinion

The Gun Issue, Again

CREDIT: Danziger

Memphians had their own occasion for mourning gun violence this past Friday, when MPD officer Martoiya Lang was slain by gunfire in the course of serving a drug-related warrant, and her partner, William Vrooman, was gravely wounded. Among other things, the incident served as a reminder that the illicit drug trade still provides a livelihood for criminals desperate enough in their flouting of the law to shoot and kill. What underscores the tragedy of the deadly event is that Lang and Vrooman were making what might have seemed a routine marijuana bust at a time when the nation at large is seeing a liberalization of laws regarding the sale and use of the hallucinogenic plant.

We mourn for our gallant first responders, mindful that, as Memphis police director Toney Armstrong pointed out, these courageous men and women risk their lives every day. The officers were, of course, armed against the likelihood of danger, skilled in the use of their weapons, and no doubt properly apprehensive as they carried out their mission.

It was otherwise in the other great gun-related tragedy of last Friday, when a clearly deranged youth in Connecticut, armed with an arsenal of deadly weapons, shot his way into a grade school and massacred 26 people — 20 first-graders and six adult members of the school’s staff and faculty — before putting an end to his own miserable and inexplicable existence with a single bullet.

There are numerous people in our society who advocate loosening the regulation of firearms, including members of the Tennessee General Assembly who, stoked by an ever greedier National Rifle Association, want to make it possible for weapons to be kept in locked vehicles in business parking lots. Some legislators actually want to pass “constitutional carry” legislation, making it possible for concealed weapons to be carried anywhere, anytime, by anybody. The theory, such as it is, seems to be that in a climate of worsening violence, packing heat would allow citizens to defend themselves.

Never mind all those complicated discussions about the Second Amendment to the Constitution. For the record, what it says is this: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” There is no way, in any commonwealth or universe that can be sanely imagined, that 20 little tots in the act of learning the three R’s and counting the days to Christmas can be construed as materiel for such a militia. Nor their teachers, either. And even those who, like Officers Lang and Vrooman, who can be so regarded and outfitted, are not thereby made immune from deadly assault.

This is no time for legally expanding the prevalence of high-round capacity, rapid-fire weapons in society. It is clearly time, instead, for imposing such common-sense restrictions on their use as are consistent with the aforesaid Second Amendment. The right to bear arms for some does not supersede the right to liberty for the rest of us from a proliferation of mass-killing weapons that should only be in the hands of the real well-regulated militia.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Too Much?

I agree with John Branston’s column (City Beat, November 29th issue) that $12 million is too much of an investment in the Liberty Bowl. However, investing that money into the school systems is not a guaranteed return either. According to the American Association of School Administrators, in 2007-2008 the average salary for a school superintendent with 25,000 or more students was $211,867. The Memphis City Schools superintendent, Kriner Cash, makes almost $65,000 more than that.

The money for improvements is there, but it’s how the money is used that’s creating debt. One suggested cut is laying off teachers — causing bigger classes for high schools. Between 2009 and 2011, the Memphis city school average ACT score dropped from 17.5 to 16.5, which was already lower than the nation’s 21.1 average. If test scores are already decreasing, how will having more students per classroom improve academics?

To make budget cuts, MCS should evaluate employees’ quality. If they are not “worth the money,” their salary or job should be cut. Teachers should be judged by subject, standardized student test scores, and comparisons to the national average. If they are not giving students a quality education, there should be revisions to their pay or job. Making cuts based on quality of teaching will not only improve the MCS debt but also improve Memphis as a whole.

Amanda Duckhorn

Memphis

Java Anniversary

Mary Burns deserves all credit for the success of Java Cabana, even if she didn’t found it. Burns has worked just as hard to run it as Tommy Foster, its founder and former owner. Burns transformed Java Cabana from a regular coffee shop to a popular gathering place for those who enjoy poetry and good music. Congratulations to Mary Burns and the Java Cabana team on their 20th anniversary on November 17th.

Walter D. Harris

Memphis

Bob Costas

Guns

With his recent comments advocating gun control, sportscaster Bob Costas knew that he would become public enemy number one in the eyes of the NRA, even though his comments were very reasonable. The NRA and its allies are like religious fanatics, and these fanatics cannot be reasoned with. We can have shooting after shooting, but they will always argue against any kind of sensible gun or ammunition control.

Why should James Holmes (the Aurora, Colorado, mass murderer) have been able to buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition on the internet as easily as he could have bought a pair of shoes? The expired assault weapons law would have covered the AR-15 that he used. But the ban was allowed to expire in 2004 — thanks to the efforts of the NRA and its Republican allies.

The NRA can talk of the rights of gun owners, but we also have the right to life and liberty, and allowing someone like Holmes to have access to a weapon of mass destruction such as the AR-15 and to purchase 6,000 rounds of ammunition is an infringement on those rights.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was also allowed to expire in 2004. I do not know if the Brady Act would have prevented NFL player Jovan Belcher from purchasing the handgun that he used to murder his girlfriend and to kill himself, but it could have. And it could have prevented many other handgun murders.

Philip Williams

Memphis

I hope Governor Haslam will ignore those who claim they are for states’ rights on one hand, then protest the state designing its own health-care exchange. So-called radio personalities use their shows to promote divisive views. They have no interest in solving problems. Their interest is in ratings and promoting themselves.

I expect the NRA will have full control of what will be the first bill or bills our Tennessee elected officials tackle. I read that when asked why he wants to have a gun, Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey responded that it was because there are nuts in this world. I agree with him. Why, then, do the NRA and its minions advocate for nuts to have unlimited access to guns and ammo? Why fight so hard for guns in cars, when we know that so many guns on the streets now are stolen? Will gun owners be forced to have gun safes in their trunks or glove compartments? If not, will employers be forced to hire security guards to patrol their parking lots?

Jack Bishop

Memphis