ATLANTA — This year’s Music Midtown festival, a showcase event slated to bring tens of thousands of people and big-name artists to Piedmont Park over two days in September, was canceled Monday in part due to the state’s laws surrounding guns in public parks.
Though festival organizers declined to comment on the reason they scrapped the event, multiple officials familiar with the cancellation said it stemmed from ongoing legal fallout of a permissive gun expansion that was signed into law in 2014.
The announcement sparked a bruising new clash in the November election, with Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and her allies casting blame on Republicans for adopting pro-gun expansions that cost the city a premier event.
