PUNISHING GUN-FREE BUSINESSES, BECAUSE FREEDOM

Via Blu Gal, I see that a member of the Missouri House of Representatives has filed a bill that would hold a business legally liability for gun deaths or injuries if it chooses to ban concealed weapons -- and exempt any business that allows concealed carry on the premises.

No, really. Here's the language of the bill:

571.124. 1. Any private business that displays signage which prohibits public invitees, business visitors, and employees from carrying a concealed weapon on the premises owned or occupied by such private business shall be liable for any injury or damages incurred by such public invitees, business visitors, and employees as a result of such prohibition if such public invitee, business visitor, or employee establishes by a preponderance of evidence that having access to a firearm may have prevented his or her injury or damage.

2. Any private business that does not prohibit public invitees, business visitors, and employees from carrying a concealed weapon on the premises owned or occupied by such private business shall be immune from any liability arising from its decision to permit concealed weapons to be carried on business premises.

The gunners tell us they care about "freedom." What they mean is their freedom to do what they want. They don't mean your freedom to do what they wouldn't do.

****

This bill was "INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVE JONES (50)." I assume this is not House Speaker Tim Jones of the 110th District -- it's Caleb Jones of the 50th District.

Caleb Jones has a striking life story.

In 1991, when he was 11, his mother, Pam Jones, was shot through the window of her home. She died shortly afterward. Caleb Jones now cites this horrible life experience as a reason that he has co-sponsored legislation permitting Missouri school personnel to carry concealed weapons as long as they have a concealed carry permit.

Throughout an interview, Jones returned to the words he said he first heard to help him and his siblings make sense of their mother's death. New laws might relieve some anxiety, but they won't stop a determined killer, he said.

"I don't think you can stop bad people from doing bad things," he said.

I would completely understand if someone whose mother was shot when he was eleven developed a genuine, bone-deep sense of fatalism about the law and society, and went through the rest of his life with a gut sense that you really can't stop bad people from doing bad things.

But Caleb Jones clearly believes, like so many gun absolutists, that private owned guns are the miracle elixir: allow them at your place of business and you're doing precisely what's necessary to save lives; forbid them and you're the problem if an innocent person gets shot.

Now, here's the thing: Caleb Jones's mother was one of four people killed in a mentally ill man's murder spree -- and all of them had law enforcement ties. Pam Jones seems to have been targeted because her husband, Caleb Jones's father, was a sheriff. The other victims were all in law enforcement themselves:

In addition to Jones' mother, [Jim] Johnson also killed Cooper County Sheriff Charles Smith, Miller County deputy Sandra Wilson and Moniteau County reserve deputy Les Roark. He severely wounded Moniteau County deputy Russell Borts.

More here.

Did fear of a weapon deter this killer? If he's shooting a sheriff, three deputies, and a sheriff's wife, what would you say?

I don't want to downplay the horror of what Caleb Jones went through as a child. But I don't understand how it leads him to believe that the presence of guns in a building will deter crazy people, but making it harder for crazy people to get guns won't. I don't know why it led him to see gun skeptics as the enemy.