Real-life perspective on guns in restaurants

Jim Balloch, a veteran reporter for the Knoxville News Sentinel, was eating in a local S&S Cafeteria last week when he heard a commotion from the cashier’s booth a few feet away. What happened next is a nightmare familiar to many of you who operate restaurants, a damnable side effect of keeping the doors open to everyone. No one could have prevented what happened, but some contend there’d be greater safety in what the industry blasts as a pronounced danger. Clarification on that in a moment.

First, I’ll let Jim describe what happened, as he did in this first-person account for the paper:

I stood up and started to walk to the booth to see if I could help when I heard the shot. It was a dull, flat pop, not as loud as would be expected of a shot fired inside a room.

From my angle, I could see a semiautomatic pistol, angled slightly downward. I could barely see the hand that was holding it. At that precise second, all sights, sounds and senses of time and motion were compressed into a queasy netherworld.

Balloch dove under a table, as did many of the other customers. They came out when someone yelled that the cashier, a 60-year-old retired accountant six weeks into the job, had been shot during the robbery. Dan Giles couldn’t be saved.

The Sentinel reported this week that authorities suspect the robber was a former S&S employee who killed Giles to avoid being identified. When the police went to arrest the suspect, 54-year-old Michael Chesney, he fired at them, hitting one officer. The others shot back and killed Chesney.

Balloch wrote the story.

If that had happened outside of Tennessee, I probably wouldn’t be writing this. But the state is a flashpoint in the debate over expanded gun-possession laws. The statutes were recently amended to permit consumers with a concealed-gun permit to visit alcohol-serving establishments while armed, a move that strikes many of us as increasing the chances of a shooting, not averting situations like the S&S murder.

Proponents counter that residents should be able to defend themselves in all situations, and stress that the new law doesn’t permit the gun bearer to drink.

The state’s restaurant industry, like the trade of virtually every other state that allows hidden guns in bars, has argued vehemently that the temptation might be too great. They also fret that arguments involving only one combatant stoked by drink could still lead to nose-to-barrel confrontations. The combination of alcohol and guns is just too potentially dangerous, they assert.

A restaurant server who agrees recently filed a complaint with the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He asserted that the law is putting him at considerable risk on the job. The safety watchdogs have yet to rule on the matter.

S&S Cafeterias typically don’t serve alcohol. In an e-mail to me, Balloch noted that an armed patron wouldn’t have been able to protect Giles because the cashier’s booth is tucked out of diners’ sight lines. “So in this situation, especially since it happened so quickly, there would not have even been time for a permit holder to act to even save Mr. Giles' life,” he wrote.

But if the shooter had gone on a rampage, a la what happened in Killeen, Texas, years ago, “then I would wager that everyone in the cafeteria would hope that at least someone among them had a means to resist,” Balloch said.

Gun enthusiasts would seize on that sentiment as validation for permitting weapons everywhere, from parent teacher meetings to picnics in the park. But I still don’t see how packing guns in restaurants, especially ones that serve alcohol, averts rather than fosters danger. For every Luby’s shooting, which we’re still discussing some 20 years later because of its rarity, there might be X accidental shootings, or rash gun play sparked by anger, machismo, or a few Jack Daniels downed in defiance of the law.

Those concerns should be part of the discussion, just as the potential safety might. Which is why I’ve tried to air both sides here.

Good work, Dr. Freud

Sanity seems to be making a comeback.

Oh, sure, there’s still the potent counterargument of Sarah Palin’s popularity. But consider the recent developments where reason clearly prevailed, rescuing restaurants and other service businesses from a Twilight Zone episode.

Take today's news from Tennessee, for instance. An employee of a restaurant there has reportedly petitioned the state’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration to do its job of protecting workers. In his case, the danger isn’t an ungrounded piece of electrical equipment or a slippery floor, but guns. The state is one of several that recently bowed to the gun lobby by agreeing to let licensed patrons carry concealed weapons inside alcohol-serving establishments.

Think of how many bar fights you’ve witnessed, or perhaps been pulled into. Now consider how the outcome might’ve been different if one or several of the combatants had been armed.

According to news reports, a server at a bar and grill in Hillsboro Village can anticipate the danger—not only to the persons waging the dispute, but to himself. Bullets aren’t that discriminatory.

He's reportedly filed a complaint with the state OSHA because he believes the presence of guns in a drinking establishment poses an on-the-job hazard.

Attention, those of you who are about to brand me a tool of the liberal conspiracy: Yes, the news reports quoted co-workers of the complainant as saying they feel safer knowing patrons may be carrying. Many many people in the state do like guns, and see no reason why you can't be packing when softball team heads out after the game for some adult rehydration.

But the logic eludes a lot of restaurateurs. Sanity would suggest you keep guns and alcohol separate, even if the bearer is technically forbidden to imbibe. Why mix flame and dynamite?

That’s not the only hopeful development of recent days. Consider the wholesale shift of public companies to private-owners status, a movement that could soon claim Burger King, if the Wall Street Journal’s bombshell report is accurate.

Public ownership has morphed into insanity, with analysts and shareholders squawking like third-world dictators when a company tempers its financial predictions for three or nine months out. They start tying a noose if the management team is so foolhardy as to miss the projections.

It’s ridiculous to think that multi-billion-dollar companies should be managed for three-month returns, when far greater paybacks could be engineered if a longer timeframe was allowed by investors. “Longer” being eons of, say, a year or more. A shift away from a public-ownership model makes sense.

Of course, certain pockets of insanity are proving immune to reason. Consider, for instance, the situation in Brookfield, Mass., where civic leaders decided that the center of town would be marred by the development of drive-thru restaurants. They ramrodded through a ban on the eateries—only to discover they’d inadvertently outlawed drive-thru banks and pharmacies as well. Getting out of your car for a Big Mac might be okay, but for a refill of Viagra? Pffft.

The town amended the law to permit the development of all drive-thrus except restaurants.

Guns in restaurants? Right.

Gun enthusiasts won’t be happy until swimsuits and strollers come with built-in holsters. Described below is a situation that should prompt them to stop and reconsider their drive to allow loaded pistols anywhere, including the interiors of restaurants and bars.

But first, having learned firsthand how personal a discussion like this can become, let me provide some pre-emptive qualifiers to tamp down the name-calling.

No, I’m not a communist.

No, I don’t have an issue with guns per se. I owned them as a youngster, and will soon inherit a .22 that my father-in-law purchased in the early 1960s to defend himself in the even of a Russian invasion (remember, pro-carry forces, he’s one of yours.)

No, I’m not homosexual, though that should have no bearing on this discussion.

Yes, I eat meat.

Yes, I support our troops.

Yes, I have witnessed violent crimes (two murders—one committed by a civilian with a gun who fired amidst a crowd). No, I didn’t wish I was armed in either instance.

No, I have no agenda other than protecting the restaurant industry from a bad name.

And now the clip, run in exactly the same form this morning by the Calhoun (Ga.) Times and the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune:

An altercation over steak led to the arrest of an Adairsville man on Sunday afternoon at Ryan’s Steakhouse in Calhoun.

According to the Calhoun Police Department:

David Anthony Bogue, 47, of 1141 Hall Station Road in Adairsville, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct around 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

The officer was dispatched to the restaurant where the manager said two men were arguing over waiting for a steak and that one had a gun. The officer stated that he removed the gun from a holster on Bogue’s side. The officer took Bogue and the other man, Richard Norris, 35, of 314 Liberty Road, outside to speak with them.

According to the report, Norris was behind Bogue at the steak grill. Bogue ordered his steak medium well and Norris ordered his rare. When Norris received his steak first, Bogue began to complain and curse at Norris and the cook.

Norris allegedly told Bogue there was “no reason to be cussing and stuff around these people and kids.” When the suggestion to go outside came up, Norris allegedly asked Bogue if he really wanted to go outside over a piece of steak. That’s when Bogue produced his concealed weapon permit and pulled his shirt back to show the weapon.

Bogue allegedly then said, “Do you want to go outside? Real smart.” Norris told police he then became intimidated.

Another manager saw the weapon and told him if he would sit down, she would bring him his steak. He showed her his permit and his weapon.

Bogue told the officer that Norris cut in line and that he never showed his weapon. The officer made the decision to arrest Bogue, but because of the offender’s health issues, he was taken to the Calhoun Police Department, where he was released to his father on bond.

Why guns shouldn't be permitted in restaurants

As I've reported here and in my Fohboh blog, gun advocates contend that it's ridiculous to prohibit restaurant patrons from toting concealed weapons into a place that serves alcohol. In jurisdictions stretching from Virginia to Arizona, they're hell bent on changing the laws.

Here are a few recent news developments that they may want to consider before resuming their crusade:

A man displaying a gun in a restaurant accidentally fired it early Saturday morning, killing an acquaintance who was there with him, according to Phoenix police.--AZCentral.com

A man who had a concealed-weapons permit accidentally fired his gun inside a Provo restaurant, hitting his chair. Police say they cited Ernest Fichler for discharging the weapon in city limits. They seized his 9 mm automatic pistol and turned in his license to carry a concealed weapon for state review.--Salt Lake City Tribune

Last year, eight people were slain at bars or clubs in Orlando and unincorporated Orange County, often in disputes with people they barely knew. In one case from east Orange, the deadly brawl literally started over spilled beer and ended with gunfire.--OrlandoSentinel.com

Atlanta restaurant workers learn to fight back

I posted an entry Friday in my blog on Fohboh, the foodservice social networking site, about the recent flurry of legislative proposals that would allow consumers to carry weapons into restaurants serving alcohol. Predictably, a presumed sympathizer with the other NRA assailed the contention that mixing guns and booze isn't a good idea. It's not as if people are being killed inside the restaurants of Georgia, where the laws were changed last year to let patrons come a-packin', he sniffed.

But, actually, and unfortunately, they are. Indeed, a local TV station reports that restaurant employees in Atlanta are taking precautions to protect themselves following the murder of a restaurant bartender in January. They reportedly held a two-hour self-defense class outside an establishment, while patrons looked on.

Just the sort of publicity the industry needs these days.