Wendi C. Thomas: Some palates prefer gun-free dining

"I won't eat where fellow diners are packing heat.

And there are many Tennesseans dismayed by the state legislature's decision last week. They ignored the admonitions of the law enforcement community and the governor's veto.

They made it legal, starting July 14, for gun-permit holders to carry handguns into restaurants and bars that serve alcohol, as long as they aren't drinking alcohol.

"If I see someone carrying in a bar and they don't have a badge, I assume they're there for ill will," said Steve Steffens, known online as the blogger Left Wing Cracker.

"There's a certain mindset it takes to carry a gun everywhere, and it's not a good mindset," Steffens said.

"If you have to carry to make yourself feel safe, you don't need to have a gun."

Steffens, a longtime Memphian and gun owner, has no desire to dine with people who are carrying guns, so much so that he's started a Web site at saferestaurantstennessee.blogspot.com to try to catalog the spots in Tennessee where you can dine gun-free, and plans to work with the site I created at eatgunfreetn.com to do the same thing.

Now here's something that I think restaurants should do in order to be fair and square.

Anyone entering a restaurant should be asked to select one of two buttons to wear while dining. One should read "SHOULD A NUTBAG BEGIN FIRING DO NOT SAVE MY LIFE BECAUSE I HATE GUNS", and the other "WAIT A SEC UNTIL I DRAW MY OWN PIECE THEN I'LL HELP".

Wendi, you see, has this special ability that allows her to see through cover garments and determine if someone is carrying a concealed weapon, and while that is cooler than shit it's troubling that she uses her super powers for evil. We all know that bans and rules don't apply to those with felonious intent, that's why we call them criminals, something Wendi should know since the overwhelming majority of those who use guns and knives and Louisville Sluggers for ill gotten gains happen to be of her persuasion. And hell...

We let Wendi in anyways.

It's called FREEDOM, darlin'. You can look it up. Not all folks with guns are bad people, dear one. Less than half of one percent of concealed carriers get in Dutch with the law, as opposed, say, to 70% of the violent crime being committed by a certain group, and as I've said...

We still let you in.