By: Teresa Mull

The high courts of Georgia evidently don’t think the right to self-defense is “essential.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

The statewide judicial emergency put in place Saturday by Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton ordered all Georgia courts to “suspend all but essential court functions” until at least mid-April. The move is aimed at protecting workers and limiting in-person interactions amid the spread of coronavirus.

In a statement provided Wednesday to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Council of Probate Court Judges of Georgia said it has decided that processing weapons carry licenses is not an essential function.

Though they may not be able to carry their weapons outside of their homes, vehicles, or business places, Georgians are making sure they have access to weapons despite the court’s crackdown on CCW permits.

AJC reports:

Like those in other states around the country, Georgia gun dealers say they’ve seen a huge spike in sales since the seriousness of the pandemic started to set in last week. They say plenty of regular customers have shown up to stockpile supplies, but the biggest surge has been from first-time “panic buyers” wary of what the near future may bring.

The Georgia court’s move comes as political powers in other states have empowered themselves to end the sale and transfer of firearms during the national panic. GPM reported earlier this week that New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell (D) had joined Champaign, Illinois Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen in exploiting the Coronavirus crisis to ban the sale and transfer of firearms.

Feinen had issued an executive order declaring a coronavirus emergency in the city she governs and which has not confirmed a single case of the virus. The ordinances, The New York Post reports, “let (Feinen) ban the sale of firearms and ammunition as well as booze.”

Feinen told WAND-TV:

“So many of those powers, I have had from the beginning. All we have done is enumerate them and now the public is aware of them. So, I am the liquor commissioner. I can shut down bars yesterday, I could have shut them down two years ago. Nothing has changed with respect to that, it is just that we have laid it out, so people are aware of that. In respect to the other items that are listed in the attachment, they have been listed in the city code for 15 years.”

In a similar move, Cantrell announced she is “empowered, if necessary, to suspend or limit the sale of alcoholic beverages, firearms, explosives, and combustibles.”

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), however, is telling Cantrell, “We sued once, we’ll do it again.”

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb announced on the organization’s website:

“Following Hurricane Katrina, we sued the city when then-Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration began confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens for no good reason. The federal court ordered the city to cease confiscations.

“We sued New Orleans then, and we’ll do it again,” Gottlieb vowed. “The presence of a nasty disease does not suspend any part of the Bill of Rights, no matter what some municipal, state or even federal politician may think.

“While we certainly recognize the seriousness of this virus and its ability to spread rapidly,” he continued, “treating Covid-19 and taking steps to prevent it from infecting more people has nothing at all to do with the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.

“People legally licensed to carry should not have their right to do so suddenly curtailed because some politician panicked,” Gottlieb observed. “We didn’t allow it before, and we’re not going to allow it now.”

Teresa Mull is editor of Gunpowder Magazine. Contact her at [email protected].