In Mississippi, the Republican-led state Senate has easily passed a bill not just allowing guns in Mississippi churches, under the banner of letting those churches establish their own armed "security" forces, and declaring any such members of those forces to be "immune from civil liability" if they need to haul off and shoot a few folks, but as an aside also allows the carry of holstered guns throughout the state without the current need for a concealed weapon permit or, notably, training.
Even though many of the people who would be directly in the line of fire of those new untrained would-be heroes consider that to be just a wee bit unhelpful.
The section of the bill to lower requirements for concealed-carry permits drew opposition from the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police. Executive Director Ken Winter said that provision would make it harder to stop people who appear to be engaged in wrongdoing. He also said the bill could raise the "threat level" to officers.
"We just don't believe that it's a good idea for people to be carrying concealed weapons and not have participated in any training," Winter said.
Nothing says pro-law-and-order like telling law enforcement officers that you’ll be filling their streets with limitless numbers of would-be heroes who have always wanted to be heroes but couldn’t stand the thought of having to learn which end of their gun was the shooty part.
Oh, and the bill also declares that Da Feds can't set restrictions on guns that Mississippi doesn't like, and so on and so forth, which suggests that America's Worst State is still a bit unclear on how that whole states' rights thing settled out the last time they tried it. Honestly, that's practically an afterthought at this point. You sort of have to have the part where you challenge the very notion of having a federal government if you're going to be held in any sort of regard at all by your fellow Republican lunatics. Hell, Rick Perry could do it three times before lunch.
Yeah, I don't really have anything I can add to this. The notion of Mississippi churches forming their own armed militias is, well, what it is. The declaration that Da Feds can't control how or where Mississippians use their prosthetic metal penis extensions is, at this point, rote. The part where nearly anyone in the state can now walk around packing heat and the cops can't do anything about it is appropriately third worldian, and yet another fine step forward into the Somalia that every truly patriotic conservative nut considers, at long last, to be true freedom.
Now the bill goes back to the state House, where maybe they can add some language saying that if you yell Praise Jesus while firing wildly into a marketplace you're not liable for anyone that gets shot.