More Inanity From Virginia Beach Police Chief Jake Jacocks

Allowing guns in bars is a recipe for disaster. We can fully expect that at some point in the future a disagreement that today would likely end up in a verbal confrontation, or a bar fight, will inevitably end with gunfire if you sign this legislation into law. Whether it is the armed citizen who drinks in a bar and gets into such a confrontation, or the armed citizen doesn't drink and is pulled into a confrontation by someone who has been drinking - the potential for display and/or discharge of the firearm is unquestionably high.　 Serious injuries resulting from patrons fleeing in panic once someone yells "He's got a gun!" or a death resulting from either discharge of the weapon or the reaction to the weapon by the establishment’s security personnel will be the rule, rather the exception.

Once again another idiot with a badge presumes to know what will happen if law-abiding citizens are permitted to carry their personal defense weapons lawfully. What he willfully omits is that the only thing that will change with this bill is the ability for those who so desire (and are properly permitted) may CHOOSE to carry openly or concealed, because right now there is NO LAW prohibiting open carry in the same establishments he swears up and down will become Reservoir Dog shootouts if conceal carry is permitted, as if mode of carry is the determinant factor and now, all of a sudden, previously law-abiding citizens, with their newfound freedom to CHOOSE the mode of carry with which they are most comfortable, will somehow magically devolve into short-tempered, belligerent thugs.

Never mind that the language within the bill requires that those who should so choose to carry conceal shall be prohibited from consuming alcoholic beverages while patronizing such establishments. Open carriers are not (and have not been) subject to this same prohibition. Where are the bodies, I wonder?

He has no faith in the goodness of a lawful citizenry and, while claiming to support the RKBA, speaks out of the other side of his mouth against generally the most law-abiding segment of the populace, licensed open carriers.

If you have the opportunity, please send a message to The City of Virginia Beach Chief of Police and also to the Mayor, William D. Sessoms, who appointed and defends this ignorance.