Things are starting to return to normal in so many ways for many of us. In fact, politics is shifting back into gear now that the overall threat of COVID-19 has started to fade into the background. That means it’s time to talk about various bills that were in effect prior to the lockdown and may potentially still be viable.

That also means it’s time for those who oppose the measures to take whatever action they can.

Apparently, that means virtual town halls.

More than a hundred people attended a virtual Tennessee gun violence town hall Thursday.

Several community members, including many from Memphis, spoke up about gun violence prevention during and after the pandemic.

The goal was also to urge Tennessee legislators to reject the permit-less carry legislation proposed by Governor Bill Lee in March.

Wait, it was a virtual town hall, something people could have playing in the background as they did other things on their computers, and they still only got “more than a hundred people” to attend?

Seriously?

I mean, people could even use their cell phones if they were out and about, and that’s all they got.

Holy crap, that’s freaking hilarious.

Bear in mind that the city of Memphis has over 650,000 people. Just 100-125 people (I’d expect they’d say “just under 150 people” or something like that) is nothing more than a drop in the bucket for a city, especially since it was virtual, which means it could have been attended by people all over the nation.

While some there likely tried their damnedest to make arguments against the bill, including one physician quoted as saying something about not letting people use dangerous equipment without training, all of that shouldn’t matter too much because so few people bothered to attend.

Though, to address the one argument available, I have to point out that numerous other states already have permitless carry, also known as constitutional carry, and have had it without incident for quite some time now. Other states issue permits, but do not require training. In these states, there’s also a profound lack of incidents.

It’s important to remember that while firearms are dangerous, they’re only dangerous under similar circumstances to weapons like knives. In other words, they’re dangerous if used improperly or with criminal intent.

Again, not that it matters.

With so few people attending, it seems unlikely they can muster enough support to really stop a bill backed by the governor. That’s good because the criminals–people operating these dangerous pieces of equipment without proper training–are still going to do it regardless. It’s stupid to hamstring the good guys with a law that does nothing to stop the bad guys, especially if that was the best argument they proposed.