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Regarding the Tweetsie Trail

SovereignAxe

Regular Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
791
Location
Elizabethton, TN
I'm sure everyone from Johnson City is aware of the Tweetsie Trail by now. For those of you not from Johnson City or Elizabethton, it's a walking trail put in place over the property where the railroad tracks used to be that ran from Johnson City to Elizabethton. It runs from Legion Street in JC, to Elizabethton, across the highway from Sycamore Shoals park. There are spurs that run further, and branch off in several places. It's a great place to get some exercise, ride your bike, or just to go for a stroll and enjoy the scenery. More info: http://www.tweetsietrail.com/

Anyway, the reason for this post is that I ran across a Johnson City Press article recently about regulating guns and horses on the trail. I'm sure we can all guess as to how the issues came up, but the gist of it is that horses remain banned from the trail, for hopefully obvious sanitary reasons, but just as importantly because the trail is unpaved-it is a fine grit aggregate surface that is easily chewed up by horse hooves. Also, it was decided that guns could not be banned from the trail because of TN preemption. However, the story noted that if Johnson City were to somehow declare the trail a city park, that it could ban firearms from the trail because TN law allows municipalities to ban guns from city parks.

Now as far as I know there are no active plans in Johnson City to make that change, but the mere mention of it was enough to give me pause. Unfortunately I no longer live in Johnson City, so there's not really anything I can do about it because I'm pretty sure Johnson City controls the whole trail. But at the same time, I don't know if they could legally ban guns on the Elizabethton side.

Either way, this is something I wanted everyone in Johnson City to know about in case there's anything you can do. Hopefully it never comes to pass, though.
 
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