Give cities gun control

The point is made: firearms are legal. That doesn’t mean we need to be obnoxious about it.

On Sept. 9, Benjamin A. Magenheimer was escorted out of the Masker Park Zoo in Evansville for reportedly causing a disturbance with zoo employees and law ?enforcement. Magenheimer’s attorney claims he was removed because he was openly carrying his gun.

If the attorney’s claims are true, legally, ?Magenheimer was in ?the right. According to a new Indiana law, gun owners can take their weapons into most public spaces (the exceptions are courthouses, schools, and ?hospitals with convicts). 

I don’t agree with this law. Yay for the Second Amendment and all, but a city or municipality might have a legitimate reason for banning guns from certain public ?spaces.

But this law, handed down from the Statehouse, gives them no recourse but to allow guns anywhere their owners want to take them. This law needs to be overturned. Cities should be able to put necessary restrictions on guns that the Statehouse might not consider because the legislators aren’t ?familiar with a certain area.

Let the cities each enforce the Second Amendment. Stop legislating from on high for areas you know little or nothing about. Maybe it’ll have the same result, and cities will stick to limiting guns in a select few places and allow them ?everywhere else.

But if, for whatever reason, a city thinks it would be dangerous for a citizen to carry a gun into a certain public area, the city should be allowed to make that ?judgment call. After all, city government officials were elected to lead just as the state congressmen and women were. They are equally as qualified and smart. They can take care of their areas themselves.

For right now, Magenheimer is allowed to carry firearms into the Masker Park Zoo. Okay, carry it on your hip, but don’t make a big deal about it. That’s the best way to make people more comfortable with gun owners.

­— hanns@indiana.edu