Guns in restaurants draw stares but little outcry
Credit: sxc.hu
In Virginia, gun owners are allowed to carry firearms in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, as long as the restaurant permits it and they carry their weapon openly. Legislation to allow concealed weapons in restaurants serving alcohol passed the General Assembly this year, but was vetoed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.
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By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press Writer
Published: May 9, 2008
RESTON, Va. (AP) — The patrons at Champps, an upscale restaurant and bar chain, were eating ribs and drinking beer on a recent Saturday when customer Bruce Jackson stood up and made an announcement: He was armed, and so were dozens of other patrons.
The armed customers stood up in unison, showing off holstered pistols and revolvers. Jackson said a word or two about the rights of gun owners to carry firearms in Virginia, then thanked everyone for their attention and sat down.
And the diners returned to their burgers and Budweisers.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League organized the dinner at Champps to prove a point: that the presence of armed customers in northern Virginia restaurants would elicit little more than shrugs.
The dinner — and several other restaurant visits throughout northern Virginia last month — were a response to comments from the majority leader in the state Senate, Democrat Richard Saslaw, who said during a legislative debate that armed patrons would be unwelcome in northern Virginia restaurants.
“In most urban areas, you walk into a restaurant with a gun on your hip, they’re going to tell you to get out,” Saslaw said.
In fact, with a few exceptions, the gun owners got their meals. The group went to eight different restarants in April — at two of them, they were asked to leave. More often than not, though, their presence failed to generate a stir.
All the restaurants were in Fairfax County, a bastion of suburbia and soccer moms outside Washington that is the wealthiest county in America, according to the most recent Census data. It is also a place where nerves over the gun debate are still somewhat raw a year after the shootings at Virginia Tech, where 32 people were slain, including many from northern Virginia.
The restaurants included numerous family establishments including the Fuddruckers burger chain and the McLean Family Restaurant.
“We wanted to prove not only that (Saslaw) was wrong, but we wanted to make the point that we have the right to self defense. That’s a God-given right,” said Dave Vann, a retired D.C. police officer and VCDL member who organized the restaurant visits.
In Virginia, gun owners are allowed to carry firearms in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, as long as the restaurant permits it and they carry their weapon openly. Legislation to allow concealed weapons in restaurants serving alcohol passed the General Assembly this year, but was vetoed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.
While Virginia is generally considered friendly to gun owners, it is only one of two states along with Montana, that requires people to openly carry arms in restaurants that serve alcohol, according to the Web site opencarry.org, which promotes and monitors gun owners’ rights. Eleven states ban guns altogether in restaurants that serve alcohol, while the rest make no distinction between open and concealed carry.
At Champps, several patrons failed to notice that so many customers were armed, even though dozens of gun-toting men and women had walked right past them.
Tomas Nolasco of Reston said he hadn’t noticed the guns and didn’t care as long as they weren’t drinking. (They weren’t.) His wife was a little more concerned.
“There are families in here, children in here,” Cathy Nolasco said. “It bothers me.”
Brendan Fitzgerald of Reston and his friends noticed the guns immediately. They were curious but unconcerned.
“I’m just laughing because it’s totally unnecessary in my opinion,” Fitzgerald said, pointing to one individual who not only was armed but also had several clips of ammunition attached to his belt.
“This is Reston, not Southeast,” said his friend Nathan Dicken, contrasting the northern Virginia suburb to a section of the District of Columbia that has been known for gun violence.
The gun owners say those patrons’ comments miss the point. Vann said the gun owners’ presence make the restaurant more safe, not less. Champps’ manager — Carey Vereen, a gun-rights supporter — agreed.
“This is an area with a large population of government agents — FBI, CIA, local,” Vereen said. “In terms of people seeing open carry, it’s not a shock to our customers.”
Indeed, many of the men who carry weapons say people frequently just assume they’re police or retired police.
For women who carry, it’s a different story. At one restaurant — Mike’s American Grill — the group had gone essentially unnoticed until a woman in her 20s with a satin-finished, stainless-steel revolver got up from her table.
The restaurant’s manager spotted her and asked the group to either put the guns in their cars or leave. They left.
“When I saw the gun on her hip, I was like, ‘What is going on here?”‘ said the manager, Gabba Kaye, who hadn’t noticed the guns when the group of 20 checked in for their lunch reservation.
Kaye said he hadn’t received complaints from customers, but that the weapons made him uncomfortable. He also said he had been warned by the restaurant’s ownership after word got out that VCDL planned a series of restaurant visits. He was specifically instructed not to allow them service while carrying.
The woman who caught the manager’s attention said the gun always attracts notice.
“Every time I go out, I notice people’s eyes going right here,” said the woman, pointing to her hip. She de-clined to give her full name out of privacy concerns. “It’s interesting because it’s not a reaction of fear. It’s more a reaction of ‘You can’t do that. You can’t carry a gun.’ ... It’s like disdain.”
She said she only recently began carrying a gun after a string of sexual assaults in her Alexandria neighborhood.
The second restaurant that turned the group away was Kilroy’s in Springfield — a restaurant where Saslaw was popular enough to once have a sandwich named after him. The owner also said he had been aware of earlier news reports that the VCDL was planning a series of armed lunches.
“We’d just prefer they not come to the restaurant,” said the owner, Phillip “Pip” Thomas. “I’m sure it would offend some customers.”
Saslaw said he’s not necessarily surprised that VCDL found restaurants in the region that would allow them to dine while armed. But he said that carrying guns is simply not normal behavior in this area.
“What normal person walks around with a gun on your hip? Something’s wrong in your life” if you feel compelled to carry a gun as part of your daily routine, he said.
The gun owners bristle at that stereotype. Nearly 100 people attended the various lunches and dinners, including many retired military personnel. Others were white-collar professionals. While most were white men, the group included blacks, Hispanics, Asians and women.
“This isn’t a bunch of drunk rednecks sidling up to a saloon,” said Christopher Wu, 28, of Alexandria, carrying a Springfield XD45 pistol.
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Reader Reactions
Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on May 14, 2008 at 3:28 pm
(dr1024) I was right! And indeed, [Policy Center (VPC) of “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” (CDC)] is a radical Left Wing organization. Kennesaw, GA. and Washington D.C. are indistinguishable in SO MANY ways. LOOK, I don’t want to take your guns away. I just think you have “issues”.
Posted by ( japov ) on May 14, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Cosmo Wafflefoot,
You clearly never took a debate class.
Your argument structure is more like a pile, and making yourself a moving target by not sticking to a subject, or changing your argument when you’ve been proven wrong is a sure sign that you’ve lost.
Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on May 14, 2008 at 12:32 pm
(Punto), It is utterly futile to attempt to enlighten these people with rational facts. You can sit in an airport and explain the safety of air flight to a person with an irrational phobia against flying until the cows come home. It is useless. Fear based behavior is often irrational behavior. Being an atheist myself, I of course, have no rights what-so-ever and God let 9/11 happen because I live in America. These are the kind of minds we are dealing with here. [Question:] Why are so many people getting paper cuts? [Answer:] Not enough paper! OYE!
Posted by ( dr1024 ) on May 14, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Cosmo,
So let me get this straight. You use statistics and figures from an anti-gun-rights group (Violence Policy Center (VPC)) to support your argument? Don’t you think it might be a bit biased?
When I look at the raw data I see some interesting things. First they are listing “firearm death rates”, not crimes committed with a firearm, but all deaths including hunting accidents, suicide, and justified use of force. Nor does it list/compare overall crime rates. This isn’t a fair comparison. The raw data also shows that you/they omitted the fact that the single largest (by a large margin) per capita death rate was Washington, D.C., which has had a total ban on hand guns and any other working/functional gun since the late 70’s. Also Virginia and Vermont are below the average and have some of the most open gun laws of any of the states. In Vermont you don’t even need a permit to carry a gun concealed. It also doesn’t list or take in to account the lives saved each year by guns. It is estimated that guns are used to protect someone between 200,000 and 2.5 million times a year. These numbers where arrived at multiple times by pro-gun-rights groups, anti-gun-rights groups, and independent statisticians. (Ironically one of the anti-gun-rights group’s studies, while trying to prove the numbers wrong, came up with an even higher number.) To over look the good guns do, would be the same as to over look the good cars do, and try to ban them because of the number of people killed by cars (more than guns) each year.
The other problem is that you seem to like to compare different places. You yourself said, “Countries that have far, far fewer violent crimes and crimes committed with a gun have one thing in common. It AIN’T more people walking around armed!” Then when navywings points out that several other countries with ‘far, far fewer violent crimes and crimes committed with a gun’ do have about as many guns, or several others with far, far fewer guns that have more violent crimes and crimes committed with a guns you dismiss the idea of comparing different counties based on social politics. Well which is it, you said it was clear that it was guns, and now you say it is politics and economics?
The best way to compare anti-gun-rights with gun-rights and see which is better is to look at the same place, before and after a change in gun-rights policies. And we can do that right here in the US. Take Washington, D.C. In the late 70’s D.C. effectively banned all guns. What was the result of that action? Year after year of higher gun crime rates. Then we have Kennesaw, GA. In 1982 they passed a law that everyone must own a gun. The result? Blood in the streets? No, a 50% decrease in crime and not one murder in 25 years. You can also look at individual states. Starting back in 1986, 41 states had no right to carry, or very limited right to carry. Today only 11 do. So what happened to those 30 states that now support a law-abiding citizen’s right to carry? Did the crime rates go up? Did blood flow in the streets? No. In all cases there was either no statistical change or a decrease in crime.
Posted by ( Punto di vista di paradigma ) on May 14, 2008 at 5:21 am
Vann appears to present an inappropriate logic. “The God given right to carry a gun comes from the God given right to self defense” is looking pretty thin. Taken at the value of the logic of that phrase, a felon has the right to carry a gun to defend himself. If a government grants privileges but a creator gives rights, then why shouldn’t the convicted felon have the “right” to carry a gun? By the suggested logic of argument, a government can take away privileges, because that is its domain, but a government (under this logic) cannot take away rights, because that is the domain of a creator. Such is the conclusion suggested by the logic presented in the presented position.
Citing American historical documents may be pointing out a particular national-historical perspective or consciousness, but it certainly is not a primary source document for the mind of God. People should acknowledge that basic truth and base their arguments on proper, correct sources.
Further, even if a person is an atheist, does that fact thereby strip them of “rights” (domain of creator)? That’s not going to stand up in any court of law in the land. If the gun rights argument is going to boil down to belief in God, then it is an extremely thin argument, especially given that America has always been pluralistic from the very beginning, and only a blindly biased person is going to argue that such is not the case.
On the original news story, I find it telling that a group marches into a restaurant and feels it’s appropriate to announce and show as they do. If they’re claiming that it’s just to make a point, then what’s the difference between that group making a display of their beliefs in a public place and any other group doing the very same kind of thing? Couldn’t people in the restaurant claim they don’t like something “shoved down their throat”? On the other hand, any other groups that use that methodology could only hope that people would just notice it, shrug, and go back to whatever they were doing with no repercussions. Perhaps if they’d just come in and not flaunt their beliefs, people would just accept them a little better. After all, you can’t fairly lambast one group for using that strategy and claim another group has a free pass on criticism.
Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on May 13, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Nice try (japov). But this ain’t Switzerland, Norway or any other country with a stable socialist economy and a low poverty/high education rate. This is the good old USA where racial/economic/ educational and religious differences run wild. Here we see this!
[Blind Allegiance to the Second Amendment Takes Deadly Toll:]
WASHINGTON, April 24 2008[Reuters] /PRNewswire-USNewswire/—States in the South and West
with weak gun laws and high rates of gun ownership lead the nation in overall
firearm death rates according to a new analysis issued today by the Violence
Policy Center (VPC) of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. The new VPC analysis uses 2005 data (the most recent available) from the CDC’s
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. The analysis reveals that
the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana,
Alaska, Montana, Tennessee, and Alabama. Each of these states had a per capita
gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32
per 100,000.
By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had
far lower rates of firearm-related death. Ranking last in the nation for gun
death was Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New
York. The VPC defined states with “weak” gun laws as those that add little or
nothing to federal restrictions and have permissive concealed carry laws
allowing civilians to carry concealed handguns. What a shock(!) Now you get to say some nonsense like, “Well, those stats were made up by people that hate guns.” The fact is we would, with our total make up considered, have a high murder rate anyway. But, as common sense dictates, more gas, bigger fire.
Posted by ( navywings ) on May 13, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Cosmo,
By the way, please don’t state positions for me that I have not taken. I have never stated I think everyone should be or walk around armed. Once again you miss the point.
My position is quite simple. You or I should have the ability to exercise our rights. Not hard to understand. If you have a right, you should be able to exercise that right wherever you go.
If I have the right to carry a firearm (as the Supreme Court has affirmed many times over), I should not be restricted as to the place of carry. If I’ve already been licensed to carry a handgun, the government has already affirmed my right and my competency. If either were not true, I should not be able to carry. That being said, standing on university property for example makes no impact on my character than standing off the property. Walking onto a university campus doesn’t make one a homicidal maniac so why should my already affirmed right be impeded in certain locations? You’re already concerned with criminals staling guns, so by your logic, you should support me being able to keep possession of my weapon at all times. Being forced to remove it and leave it in my vehicle is far less safe than keeping it with me.
You can’t have it both ways Cosmo. You can’t tout your “fear” of criminals stealing weapons and ask that I remove my weapon to place it in a less secure place.
So back to my original position. it’s not one of everyone should be armed but everyone granted the right to do so by law should be allowed to without encumbrance.
Posted by ( navywings ) on May 13, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Cosmo, your circular logic continues to be a source of amusement. Okay, based on your illustration of an unreasonable fear of not going into the water if you’re afraid of sharks, the equivalent with respect to society is NOT GOING OUT OF YOUR HOUSE. The surfer who either carries a bang stick or surfs in waters known not to have many attacks is the same prevention as someone minimizing their risk by carrying a gun in public. Your logic just is plain flawed. At least I’m comparing apples to apples.
As for your statistics, you need to cite some data. Every single study done on the topic has shown NO CORRELATION between increased gun laws and violent crime. Australia BANNED guns outright and the latest study showed NO EFFECT on violent crime http://www.gunsandcrime.org/auresult.html. The UK’s gun crime is rising. How do you explain that?
Cosmo, you miss the fact gun laws only impact LAW ABIDING citizens. Hence the term criminal. NO law is going to impact the criminal since they’re not following the law anyway. Duh.
So what’s your solution? Ban guns? Countries have tried that and still have violent handgun crime. So the only way to prevent that is to cease manufacturing the weapons. We have military so that won’t happen. As long as they’re in production criminals will get them. Suppose for a second you do manage to rid the earth of guns. We’ll then be debating this same point but on the merits of knife carry. So anyone who would carry a knife to protect themselves would have a phobia according to you.
I’m pretty much done with the topic. You are typical of head in the san gun control nuts who have nothing more than emotional arguments and cannot produce one shred of real data to support your position. Keep up the reading. the data is out there and while cities like DC with the strictest gun laws enjoy the worst crime rate.
Posted by ( dr1024 ) on May 13, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Cosmo Wafflefoot,
I have never been in a car accident in my life. Am I phobic if I refuse to drive somewhere without putting on a seat-belt? Am I phobic if I buy the car with the higher crash test ratings? Am I phobic if I have full auto insurance coverage instead of the minimum liability insurance required by law? My house has never caught fire. Am I phobic if I have a fire extinguisher on each floor, or in the kitchen? Am I phobic if I change the battery in my smoke detectors each year? I have a life-insurance policy and a will so that my family will be taken care of when I die. Am I phobic?
You seem to incorrectly associate a phobia as being something the minority is afraid of, or prepares for. A phobia is an unreasonable/irrational fear, not a fear that the major doesn’t have (or doesn’t take as seriously). The majority can have an unreasonable fear, such as being xenophobic. You confuse preparedness and responsibility - recognizing risks and taking actions to eliminate or minimize those risks – with being phobic or afraid. I have never been attacked, but I recognize that it is possible that it could happen one day. So what is the most reasonable and effective way to handle this? Just go about my life like an ostrich with my head in the sand and hope that it never happens? Say home and never go out? (Now that would be phobic.) Higher paid bodyguards? (Which begs the question, why should guards be able to have guns if citizens can’t? Does the simple fact that they get paid to do a job make the person more reliable and trustworthy?) Call 911 and hope I or my family is still alive when the police arrive?
So why are you so “phobic” about law abiding people who chose to carry a gun? I can understand you being concerned about criminals having guns, but you can’t prevent that. You mention the “confiscation of ALL guns” being more reasonable. The ban and confiscation of all illegal drugs doesn’t seem to have worked very well. Even small kids can get illegal drugs and they have been banned and illegal for how many years?
Posted by ( japov ) on May 13, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Cosmo Wafflefoot,
Again, wrong. I simply don’t carry all the time, and I never Open Carry.
I said specifically that I ‘value self defense’. That means exactly what it is defined as meaning, and comes along with no other implications.
I also was never indoctrinated or scared into carrying.
I have not myself advocated that everyone walk around armed. No one who is not compelled to carry should be bothered to carry.
QUOTE: “Myth No. 3: The United States has such a high murder rate because Americans own so many guns.
There is no international evidence backing this up. The Swiss, New Zealanders and Finns all own guns as frequently as Americans, yet in 1995 Switzerland had a murder rate 40 percent lower than Germany’s, and New Zealand had one lower than Australia’s. Finland and Sweden have very different gun ownership rates, but very similar murder rates. Israel, with a higher gun ownership rate than the U.S., has a murder rate 40 percent below Canada’s. When one studies all countries rather than just a select few as is usually done, there is absolutely no relationship between gun ownership and murder.”