HALF-COCKED GUN IDEA HAS TO GET SHOT DOWN
If you think throwing beers is scary, imagine loaded weapons in the stands
A couple years ago I was in Minnesota to cover the NHL playoffs and took some time to walk around St. Paul and take in the sights.
There are not a lot of sights in St. Paul. But there was a children’s museum, which was notable for the signs it had in the front window: No firearms allowed.
This struck me as oddly funny. Was there such a demand to bring handguns into the kids’ museum that it needed a specific prohibition?
“Sir, the Lego display is here and the Play-Doh is over there, and the bouncy castle is out back, and please put your SIG Sauer in this lockbox before signing out your paint brushes.”
But as that trip wore on, I noticed there were no-handguns signs in a lot of places where weapons should, rather evidently, not be allowed — places such as the Xcel Energy Center, where the Wild play, and the Target Center, home to the Timberwolves. Same deal in Chicago at the United Center: specific signage outlawed guns.
Again, this seems like the most obvious of precautions. What kind of lunatic would want to introduce loaded weapons into the highly charged atmosphere of a professional sports arena?
These lunatics: Matt Shea, David Taylor and Bob McCaslin, three state legislators in Washington who have brought forward a bill that would allow people with concealed-weapons permits to bring handguns into arenas and stadiums in the state, which include CenturyLink Field, home to the Seattle Seahawks and Sounders, and Safeco Field, where the Mariners play.
The proposed law would essentially ban handgun bans in any publicly managed facility, which includes the big stadiums. It would not shock you to learn the three sponsors of the bill are Republican. It would also not shock you that in liberal Washington state, no one expects the bill to become law.
Let us hope this is true. The last thing America needs at this troubled point in its existence is a bunch of pistol-wielding drunks who are very unhappy with that roughing-the-passer penalty.
The sports leagues, of course, agree.
“Major League Baseball is committed to providing a safe environment at all our ballparks and believes that our current policy is the right one for all of our fans,” an MLB spokesman told Forbes.
An NFL spokesman told the Washington Post: “We haven’t seen the proposed legislation but we have a policy forbidding carrying a weapon into NFL stadiums.”
And well they should. Try watching an NFL game from the highest reaches of the stands and you will inevitably see a number of incidents as the security staff, in their fluorescent jackets, scramble to break up altercations. Once the second half rolls around and everyone has been suitably refreshed at the beer concessions, the fights only pick up in frequency. The sudden rush of the brightly clad security staff is like a little display of fireworks bursting out among the seats.
Introduce a gun into this environment, and like the one in Chekhov’s axiom, it must go off at some point. People throw hats when they’re happy at a sporting event and beers and flares and batteries and snowballs and whatever else they can get their hands on when they are angry. It’s madness to think that eventually one of those acting irrationally wouldn’t end up shooting a pistol in the air, or at someone.
Local media in Washington has noted the gun-toting bill seems of a piece with other recent moves to test how far Republican ideas could be pushed in a blue state in a post-Trump world, such as a bill to end the separation of church and state in schooling. The reality is these ideas, in left-leaning Washington, will only be pushed far enough to be voted down.
But there are 30 states that voted for the U.S. president-elect, and more than a few pro-gun lawmakers who must be feeling emboldened. Many of them no doubt govern in states that have major-league sports teams. No one give them any ideas.