'Lawmakers: Beyond The Dome' explores both sides of Georgia's concealed carry handgun law

The new show on GPB-TV, Lawmakers: Beyond the Dome, takes viewers to a gun rights group's meeting as part of the program's exploration of Georgia's new law which allows carrying concealed handguns in public without a license.

Douglas Jefferson equates Georgia's previous gun laws, on the books for centuries, to restrictions on Black people regarding voting under Jim Crow laws.

"It looks very much like a poll tax," Jefferson said. "You have to pay money to the government to get the permission to do something that is already written into the Constitution that says you as a citizen should be able to do."

Jefferson's not alone. He belongs to the fast-growing National African American Gun Association (NAAGA), founded in Georgia in 2015, that now has more than 45,000 members in 40 states.

Advocates of the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right to bear arms, including NAAGA members, praise the law they call "constitutional carry" because it removes the $75 fee Georgians paid to get a gun permit.

"This wasn't really a sea change," said John Monroe, Vice President and General Counsel for GA2A, formerly GeorgiaCarry.org. "Now that the law has passed, law-abiding citizens can carry without a license, and criminals still can't carry without a license because they're prohibited under the new law as well."

But not everyone agrees that lawfully carrying a gun whenever anyone wants is a good idea.

José Marquez-Leon owns a gun for protection, but only at home. 

"I don't carry it on me," the executive director of the Tech-Latino Association said. "[If] I'm pulling out a gun at my house, it's because somebody broke into my house or something. But other than that, I don't need a gun in the streets. I don't need that."

Mina Turabi agrees. She's a gun owner who also keeps he handgun in her home. 

"People are carrying them everywhere they go," she said. "You might leave it in your passenger seat, and then we see more crime happening from stolen firearms from cars from any other places when you're seeing these people outside."

On the show, Turabi challenges Monroe on why more law-abiding citizens carrying guns fail to use them in mass shooting situations.

"Because the mass shootings tend to happen in so-called gun-free zones, where there are plenty of soft targets like schools, or generally people aren't allowed to carry guns," Monroe said on the show. "Churches are another example. That's where the mass shootings tend to occur. They don't happen in police stations, I'll tell you that."

Turabi pointed to a mass shooting in Georgia last year, "when the man walked into an Asian-owned salon and killed people," she said. "It is not only happening in these gun-free zones. It's happening everywhere."

Watch GPB-TV's Lawmakers: Beyond the Dome on Sunday, July 24 at 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. or watch on demand at GPB.org.