Well, we don’t know what it is about this topic, but like a bad cough, it just doesn’t seem to want to go away! And so, we bring you the third consecutive instalment of guns-in-America…and we’ve even adopted a mascot!

The governor of the US-state of Georgia (possibly the home of our new friend Yosemite), has a piece of legislation sitting on his desk that could make it legal for gun owners to carry their firearms into parts of the Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

In late April the Georgia House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 291 in a 120-37 vote that, if signed by the governor, would allow registered gun owners to bring their weapons into areas of Georgia airports that are not controlled by the federal government. These areas include parking lots, terminals, drop off and pick up areas, and baggage areas but not those spaces secured by the Transportation Security Administration.

The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Mitch Seabaugh, said the bill is aimed at clarifying Georgia’s current gun carry laws and would not make the public less safe. Seriously people! What is wrong with you!?!

Of course with any lunacy like this there is always the quintessential sound bite that provides the proverbial icing on the cake. For this one we have have the esteemed Senator Seabaugh to thank… “Current law, right now in the state of Georgia, you can carry a firearm, if you’re properly licensed, into a shopping mall, into a bank, into a Walmart and many places around the state right now. And we’re not having incidences of random acts of violence being created by individuals who are properly licensed,” he said. Oh yes, and those 20,000-odd gun deaths a year in the US are all from unlicensed guns, no doubt.

Seemingly, the only sensible voice in all this is from airport officials who vehemently oppose such legislation. Perhaps their memories of 9-11, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, et al, are a bit more fresh? In March 2009, the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport released a statement maintaining that it would remain a ‘gun-free zone’ after a Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that concealed weapons do not belong inside Hartsfield- Jackson Atlanta International Airport. This may soon matter little, but that’s up to the Guv.