Airport gun ban faces challenge

The showdown over gun rights spilled into the nation’s busiest airport Tuesday after a Georgia legislator announced that he would walk into the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport carrying a handgun.

Republican State Rep. Timothy Bearden is the sponsor of a new law that went into effect Tuesday allowing licensed Georgia gun owners to carry their firearms in public places. In his opinion, public places include the main lobby, ticketing areas and restaurants of Georgia airports.

Hartsfield-Jackson’s general manager, however, disagreed, declaring the airport a “gun-free zone” and insisting that anyone found in possession of a handgun could be arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.

The spat, which the Atlanta Journal-Constitution dubbed “the Atlanta version of ‘High Noon,’ ” was the latest skirmish over Georgia’s new law.

As of Tuesday, concealed firearms can be brought onto public transportation and into state parks, historic sites and restaurants that earn at least half their revenue from food sales.

They are not allowed at athletic events, churches, political rallies or bars.

Atlanta officials, including the mayor, police chief and general manager of the airport, have voiced strong opposition to the new law.

TV camera crews and reporters descended on the airport Tuesday for the promised showdown, only to find that Bearden had backed down.

He picked up arriving family members from the airport without a handgun but vowed that the showdown would take place in court.

A gun advocacy group, GeorgiaCarry.org, filed a federal lawsuit against the airport and the city of Atlanta, which owns and runs it, challenging the facility’s firearms ban.

The legal challenge comes less than a week after the Supreme Court ruled that Americans had the right to own a gun for self-defense.

In striking down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the 2nd Amendment, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that the opinion should not cast doubt on “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”

For many Atlanta officials, Hartsfield-Jackson, an airport that hosts more than 84 million passengers a year, constitutes such a sensitive place.

Federal law already bans guns past the security checkpoints of U.S. airports, but at a news conference at the Atlanta airport’s crowded atrium, Mayor Shirley Franklin vowed that the city would continue to enforce a no-gun policy throughout the airport.

Allowing concealed weapons at Hartsfield-Jackson, she said, would create “an unsafe environment that would endanger millions of people.”

“My message is simple: Leave your firearms at home,” said Benjamin R. DeCosta, the airport’s general manager, who argued that the publicly owned and operated facility fell under a public-gathering exception in the Georgia law.

John Monroe, an attorney for GeorgiaCarry.org who attended the news conference to hand officials a copy of the lawsuit, said that the threatened detention and arrest of people carrying firearms violated a number of constitutional rights, including an individual’s right to bear arms and be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The lawsuit states that until the new Georgia law took effect, anyone carrying a firearm inside Georgia airports faced a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a $15,000 fine.

Monroe argued that the new law allowed Georgians to carry weapons on public transportation, which he said included the Atlanta airport.

“It’s astonishing to me that the city of Atlanta continues to hold itself above the law,” he said, noting that his group had successfully challenged an Atlanta ordinance banning firearms in city parks.

Franklin said Tuesday that she intended to have “serious conversations” with Georgia’s members of Congress, asking them to withhold federal funds from facilities that allow firearms on their premises.

Bearden, however, said he thought that Georgians with firearms permits would soon be able to carry guns into airports.

“Now [that] the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the gun rights,” he said, “I fully expect the Georgia courts will rule in favor of gun rights.”

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jenny.jarvie@latimes.com