Regarding a prior website weapons prohibition at Jim R. Miller Park for the Sept. 1-3 Georgia Country Music Festival, on August 7th, a person on the GeorgiaPacking.org website with screen name rmodel65 posted the reply below from the festival organizers (Southern Entertainment) on his inquiry:
"We actually caught this oversight on our website over the weekend. We do festivals up and down the East Coast and we flipped the verbiage from our sister fest in South Carolina. This morning at 7 am we updated the website to reflect the correct firearms laws. It was an honest mistake. We are in no way banning or making a hassle for those that are carrying, per the law."
Sounds plausible to me, an honest mistake. And good on them for quickly updating their website and removing the weapons prohibition and following Georgia law, which authorizes lawful carriers of weapons to enter publicly owned city, county, or state parks to attend either free or ticketed events, or for any other lawful reason.
However, Southern Entertainment is "banning and making a hassle" for citizens to be able to defend themselves at their sister fest in South Carolina, at what appears to be a publicly owned beach. I suppose SC citizens can have their rights violated on their taxpayer supported public property.
So while this festival is obeying state law in Georgia, it certainly isn't because they want to, so there's that. Good thing we have the law on our side in this matter.
Unfortunately, there are no criminal penalties for any private entity that illegally bans lawful weapons on publicly owned property in Georgia. There are only civil remedies available.
A lawful carrier who might sue over a violation of the law and of their rights likely would recover only their ticket cost and maybe a few thousand dollars, if that. Large festival organizers with deep pockets that determine to violate our laws laugh at such possibilities, and plow ahead full steam to do what they want, regardless of what the law states.
It would be another story of damages if a festival organizer's employee injured a lawfully armed guest while trying to keep them out, or while trying to kick them out after they got in and were later discovered to be carrying a firearm or other legal weapon. That could get very expensive for the violators.
Our lawmakers should put teeth into the law to heavily fine and possibly jail any individual that infringes upon the lawful rights of citizens. Lawful carriers have never been the problem, only criminals. We should be able to defend ourselves anywhere that criminals can go, because bad guys don't follow the law.
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