Atlanta’s canceled Music Midtown Festival puts lax gun laws to the test

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Atlanta's canceled Music Midtown Festival puts lax gun laws to the test

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As federal gun control legislation falters, developments in the music festival circuit have underscored the impact of state laws: Atlanta’s Music Midtown Festival, originally scheduled for next month, was canceled Monday following a Georgia court ruling affecting organizers prevented it from banning guns on the festival site.

“Due to circumstances beyond our control, Music Midtown will no longer be held this year,” the festival said in a statement on its website and social media accounts. “We were looking forward to reuniting in September and hope that we can all enjoy the festival together again soon.”

Music Midtown, which was founded in 1994 and last held last September, was scheduled for September 17-18 this year with Fall Out Boy, Future, Jack White and My Chemical Romance as headliners. Festivals for the past decade have been held in Piedmont Park, a 500-acre piece of land partly managed by the city.

Legal obligations stemming from Georgia’s sweeping gun laws were responsible for the cancellation, according to Billboard and Rolling Stone, both of which cited industry sources. The Atlanta Journal Constitution quoted officials who also attributed the decision to “ongoing legal ramifications.” In 2014, Gov. Nathan Deal (R) signed a sweeping package of bills that expanded the area people could carry concealed firearms to include places like bars, parks, parts of airports, and some churches. The Safe Carry Protection Act, also known as the Guns Everywhere Act, gave the state more powers to forestall local gun restrictions.

That same year, pro-gun activist Phillip Evans sued the Atlanta Botanical Gardens after he was escorted off the grounds for gun possession. The Georgia Supreme Court heard the case in 2019, ruling that companies with long-term leases could ban firearms on public land; A later Court of Appeals ruling that year reiterated that short-term events had little power to limit guns.

While Music Midtown was taking place last year, gun rights advocates challenged the gun ban this time. Evans argued in May that his legal loss against the garden, leased by the city for 50 years, paved a clearer path to victory against short-term public squatters like the festival. He told the Journal-Constitution on Monday that he had alerted organizers to his “legal concerns.”

Neither Music Midtown nor its owner, promoter Live Nation, responded to a Washington Post request for further comment on the decision to cancel the festival. Arriving Monday, a member of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens’ communications team wrote in an email, “We’ll look into it.”

Michael Julian Bond, a City Council member, told the Post Tuesday that while Live Nation hadn’t confirmed the reason for the cancellation, he could understand why organizers would be reluctant to hold the event without gun restrictions: The lawn at Piedmont Park is “Exposed practically on every side,” he said.

Bond compared Piedmont Park’s openness to the Live Nation-produced Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, where a gunman opened fire in 2017, killing dozens. He said gun proliferation, facilitated by the state’s easing of restrictions, comes with economic and social costs.

“As a society, we trade one set of rights for another,” he continued. “You can carry any kind of crazy weapon you want, but you can’t assemble peacefully.”

As gun ownership rises, Georgia looks to ease restrictions: It’s the ‘wild, wild west’

Festival security has come under intense scrutiny since a crowd killed ten and injured hundreds at rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival in November; A Post investigation found that most of the victims of the Houston event were in a crowded area. Morgan Milardo, executive director of the Berklee Popular Music Institute, said she’s seen an increase in security measures across the festival site this summer. Some instruct performers and their crew members on what to do in an emergency, such as when observing an incident from the stage.

According to Milardo, festival security tends to be “pretty black and white”. She said they include certain safety measures in a driver – or set of contractual requirements for an artist performing at a venue, like local journalist George Chidi pointed out on Friday as a possible reason for the threatened cancellation of Music Midtown – is common practice. What changed here were the laws surrounding the venue.

“It’s an open conversation in the music industry right now: how do we protect everyone?” Milardo said. “These things happen, unfortunately, and we have to be careful. The promoters who do everything they can to keep their events safe and the artists who go out of their way… it’s a long road.”

Music Midtown’s cancellation isn’t the first time entertainment industry figures have drawn attention to controversial Georgia laws. In 2019, after Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed a “Heartbeat Bill” effectively banning most abortions, Hollywood filmmakers announced their intention to boycott Georgia. The studios didn’t act on the threats, likely because of the state’s generous tax credit. Most studios remained silent again last year after Kemp signed into law voting restrictions that CNBC noted at the time drew criticism from big companies like Coca-Cola and Delta. As backlash continued to build, Major League Baseball moved its All-Star game out of Atlanta in protest.

Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee against Kemp for the Georgia governor seat, tweeted a lengthy statement Monday night he condemned his “dangerous and extreme weapons agenda”. The failed festival “is proof that his reckless policies are also endangering the Georgian economy,” the statement said, later noting that the incident “would cost the Georgian economy a proven $50 million.” Phoebe Bridgers, a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter who was set to perform on Music Midtown, retweeted Abrams’ post.

Kemp’s office did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.

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