McElroy: Living a lie: Restaurants, bars and guns
I think it's safe to say the NRA speaks for all Tennesseans when it states in its gun safety rules:
"Alcohol … must not be used before or while handling or shooting guns."
So why do NRA-backed legislators want guns in bars?
They don't. They want permitted guns allowed in restaurants, whether they serve alcohol or not.
But because the state is living a lie, the issue has tangled up the General Assembly for two sessions and gone to court in between.
The lie is that there are no bars in Tennessee.
Under state law, liquor-by-the-drink permits can be issued only to restaurants, which are defined as places where "the serving of meals is the principal business conducted."
That doesn't mean the "principal business" has to bring in half a restaurant's revenue, though.
The state Alcoholic Beverage Commission also weighs other factors such as kitchen equipment and seating. Food can be a mere plurality of revenue, as in a restaurant that earns 26 percent from meals, 25 percent from liquor, 25 percent from beer and 24 percent from souvenirs.
A restaurant can even qualify for a liquor license if it makes a "good faith" effort to sell food.
"Establishments can't force their patrons to buy food or to want to eat," ABC Chairman John A. Jones explained to the Chattanooga Times Free Press recently.
Beer, by the way, does not come under state regulation, so, from the ABC's point of view, it is food, too, a concept to which many college students can relate.
This farce was the reason the previous version of the guns-in-bars bill was thrown out. That legislation sought to ban guns from restaurants that were really bars, while liquor laws insisted that all bars were restaurants.
No wonder a judge found the bill unconstitutionally vague.
The new guns-in-bars bill does away with any such vagueness, declaring, simply, that properly permitted guns are allowed in all joints that sell alcohol.
Gov. Phil Bredesen has again vetoed the measure, declaring that "the General Assembly has essentially re-passed last year's legislation in an even more expansive and dangerous form."
"I don't understand why he would even say that," responded Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, possibly with a straight face.
Some bystanders have been hurt in the gun fight, such as the Buckwild Saloon in Nashville, which made the mistake of unabashedly being a bar.
In 2007, ABC found that food accounted for just 1.2 percent of its total sales. That was enough of a "principal business" for the saloon to keep operating then. But last year, amidst the guns-and-alcohol furor, ABC did a fresh audit and was shocked - shocked - to discover that Buckwild's food service accounted for just 2.4 percent of sales.
One might argue that doubling food sales showed a good faith effort, but the "restaurant's" license still was suspended for 90 days.
"We are under the microscope of some members of the Tennessee General Assembly," ABC's Jones admitted to the Times Free Press.
A token effort to clarify what's a bar and what's not was introduced this legislative session but now lies dormant in committee.
It's a safe bet it will never pass. Instead, guns soon will be in bars, where no one wants them, and, when the microscope goes away, places like Buckwild will get back to their "primary business."
