To solve the nearly non-existent problem of crime in parks, the Tennessee legislature has come up with an intriguing solution:
Eliminate all local regulations against guns in parks, but ban squirt guns.
Their argument: Let's help the police keep from shooting children.
Somewhere in their ideology-addled brains, they know that the increased presence of weapons has the unpleasant side effect of making police more twitchy because of the potential that any encounter could easily become an armed encounter.
So to keep kids from being killed, they want to enact a ban on toys.
But that's not all.
An amendment was offered to lift the ban on guns at the Capitol to help legislators be as safe as the rest of us are. That was, of course, rejected, because it would require a "fiscal note" to take into account the costs of the bill.
The costs were all related to security.
So, in a nutshell: The rest of the public is safer if unsecured parks are opened up to weapons -- EXCEPT SQUIRT GUNS -- but the legislators at the Capitol think it's the opposite in that small area of Tennessee called Legislative Plaza.
Here's the press conference.
UPDATE: The Senate has approved the amendment allowing guns in the statehouse. Since this changes the bill, the House has to reconsider it.