Tennessee Firearms Assoc. Inc.

I and a few friends have been working on an idea to begin addressing the issue of businesses who do not respect our rights. We believe that the way to deal with these businesses is to interact with them on a business level - we have to be professional and articulate, and convey our thoughts and feelings in a calm, civilized manner. Too many people are convinced that we gun owners are a "wild" and dangerous group; they surmise that we do not represent the mainstream demographic of our communities. To debate that, we need to be able to present clear, concise, and factual information.

I realize that most of us are concerned not only for our safety, but for our privacy. That is commendable, but we must also be willing to be counted, so to speak, in a verifiable way in order to build a case for businesses to see the only impact that really matters: Their bottom line - we need to work on a system that can show concrete evidence that a percentage of the population can, and will, affect the profitability of businesses in the community.

I believe that the best way to begin this process would be to form a PAC, and collect as much demographic and statistical data that we can compile. We need to identify what percentage of the population carries, or supports carrying, for protection, and get information on the average median income, education level, age, etc. This information will allow us to compare and contrast with similar demographic information used by marketing firms and business analysts; with this we can demonstrate that, by excluding these customers (posting No Firearms signs), these businesses are actually restricting their own profitability.

Further, I would propose a "Master Petition" of carry permit holders, or supporters, who would take a pledge to boycott any business which opposes our Second Amendment rights. From this list we could provide a verifiable target impact - by stating the number of signatures along with evidence that they had been attested in some manner, which would give us more credibility yet still protect the privacy of our participants.

Any thoughts, advice, interest, etc?

I just use the "merchant cards"

They've been well-received whereever I've used them...and most often, that's been giving it to a manager
along with a "thank you for respecting our rights" conversation.

David

Here's the thing that I've noticed about other states like GA where there is no posting law....places don't post. The only place I've seen posted in GA is Ikea...and it's not a legal posting since there's no law. Heck, Regions banks aren't posted in GA! So my suggestion is working on getting 1359 repealed in one of two ways. The possibly quicker way is getting our reps/senators to repeal the bill next session. The more "solid" way (as in, it will never come back way) is to sue about it constitutionality. The TN Constitution says that weapons laws can only be enacted with "a view to prevent crime." It's very easy to argue that by allowing business owners to legally post against handgun permit holders carrying that it does not prevent crime. Logically law abiding citizen, doing a law abiding act can not equal crime. If you take the legs out from under business owners in this way we will probably find that they won't even think about posting non legal signs as they don't think about it.