Having spent a lot of my adult life in the bar business, I watch Bar Rescue on SpikeTV religiously. The show airs a new episode on Sunday nights at 10pm est. So last night, when I tuned in, I was rather confused when a repeat episode was running, despite it being new episode time and even my DirectTV program guide showing a different and new episode scheduled. So instantly I took to the Google and found out what happened:
Nashville police on Sunday said they are still investigating a fatal shooting in the early hours of Saturday morning that left a country singer deadinside a downtown Nashville bar.
Wayne Mills, 44, was shot by Pit and Barrel bar owner Chris Ferrell, police said. Ferrell told police he shot Mills in self-defense following an argument over Mills smoking in the bar. Mills later died atVanderbilt University Medical Center.
“We’re investigating Chris Ferrell’s claims of self-defense,” said Kris Mumford, a police spokeswoman. Ferrell is not in custody and there have been no arrests, she said.
And for the big kicker:
In an odd twist, Pit and Barrel was to have been featured on tonight’s episode of Bar Rescue on cable network Spike TV. The series features struggling bars and nightclubs that are given makeovers by a nightclub expert. The network has decided to pull the episode, running a rerun of a previous show instead, according to spokeswoman Shana Tepper.
Well they didn’t air it at 10, but apparently they screwed up and did air it at 1am, which is when they usually re-run the new episode.
But the news here isn’t of my television viewing habits. Instead the news is of guns and bars, which makes for a deadly combination. Over at Bar Rescue Updates, one of their fans captured something really interesting in a scene. Here’s the show’s host, Jon Taffer (on the right), in a scene talking to the bar owner.
Notice anything in that image? Zoom in over Jon’s left shoulder and this is what you see:
Yup, they are advertising that you are allowed to bring your gun into the bar, because nothing spells “fun night out” like getting drunk and seeing someone shot!
Hopefully some good can come from this tragic story. Maybe we can start having a serious, grown-up discussion, about mixing guns and alcohol. Sure it’s a no-brainer to those of us that use common sense in life, but our elected leaders, who constantly whore themselves out to the NRA, lack that common sense. So can we try to educate them and hold this up as an example of why this is such a bad idea?