Tennessee Firearms Assoc. Inc.

I recently met a friend (who is an attorney) at a local Knoxville Panera Bread Co. restaurant to discuss gun laws and the legal definition (and case law) of criminal trespassing (I started a thread about this elsewhere on the forum about this). Panera Bread offers free wifi and we both had our laptops and were doing legal research online. I wanted to check the TCA via the Michie website and knew there was a link on TFAOnline.org. Imagine my surprise when I found that the website is a prohibited website according to Panera. I figured maybe they were corporately (but not locally) anti-gun (they are not posted) so checked the NRA website and that came through just fine. Anybody know about this?

I didn't bother to ask any of the workers, since I went directly to the MIchie website and got the TCA there.

John Harris, is there secretly porn somewhere on this website? <just kidding>

This is the response I got back from Panera ...to be fair to them ....


Mr. Morrow,

My name is Tom Krings and I'm one of the owners for the Panera Bread franchise here in East Tennessee and the North Peters cafe is one of my locations. I'm responding to your question regarding your concern that we might have a "political agenda" due to the WiFi problem you encountered. I can assure you that as a life long hunter and outdoorsman who owns many guns myself, the problems you encountered with accessing the website you've referenced have nothing to do with Panera Bread harboring some ideology or political agenda regarding guns or gun ownership. It does however have everything to do with a third party vendor whom provides our free WiFi across the country and them having filters that at times won't recognize specific ISP addresses as valid and subsequently will not allow them as a protocol safety precaution. While I appreciate it impacts you specifically due to this particular website, your problem is not unique and the WiFi provider will be the first to tell you that. We have brochures in our cafes which offer a phone number for you to contact someone regarding any issues you have with the free WiFi service we provide.

Thanks for taking the time to contact us regarding your concern.

Tom Krings
CSC Investments LLC
d/b/a Panera Bread

That's likely accurate. They probably use a filter, and TFA falls under the "weapons" category. They check a box, and all "weapons" websites are blocked.

It's this way for me at work. TFA's websites are banned, Brady Campaign's aren't, and it's all due to the filter set up by a third party.