Tenn. GOP ends session early with no gun measures
Governor plans to summon lawmakers back
NASHVILLE — Hundreds of students, parents, and teachers marched to the Tennessee State Capitol, day after day, demanding a ban on assault weapons and action on gun control. Their calls were echoed by musicians like Amy Grant and Sheryl Crow, who trekked to the Legislature to personally lobby lawmakers after a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school.
Several faith leaders joined the effort, writing to Republican leaders to urge them to support a proposal that would help temporarily restrict access to guns for people found by a court to be a danger to themselves or others.
But Friday, Republicans instead cut short the year’s legislative session and punted on any measure dealing explicitly with guns, capping a whirlwind three months of lawmaking that underscored the power of the farright flank of the Republican Party in Tennessee and saw the brief expulsion of two Black Democratic lawmakers.
“It’s frustrating and motivating,” said Jamie Starnes, 37, who spent Friday morning protesting in the Capitol with a group of mothers, many of whom had never demonstrated in person until their friends and their children were traumatized by the shooting at the Covenant School that killed three adults and three 9-year-olds. “We’re not going anywhere,” she added.
Within two hours of the Legislature’s hasty departure, the state’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, announced that he would summon lawmakers back for a special session to revisit the debate, with details expected in the coming weeks. Lee, whose wife lost a friend in the attack, had pushed the Legislature to pass an order of protection law, which, in an effort to win conservative support, had become so limited in scope that some experts said it would not qualify as the type of “red flag law” scorned by gun rights supporters.
“There is broad agreement that dangerous, unstable individuals who intend to harm themselves or others should not have access to weapons,” Lee said in a statement. “We also share a strong commitment to preserving Second Amendment rights, ensuring due process and addressing the heart of the problem with strengthened mental health resources.”
But it was clear as the Legislature departed Friday that any measure that would limit access to guns, even one as narrow as the proposal championed by Lee, would face steep odds with the Republican supermajority.
Republicans largely panned that proposal and argued that they were too far into the session to revamp the state budget and examine the ramifications of such a law. Instead, they highlighted passage of about $140 million to fund school resource police officers on public school campuses, another request from Lee.
Speaker Cameron Sexton suggested that Republicans would look elsewhere, having discussed other proposals that would “focus on the mental health aspect of this and just closing loopholes currently in the law.”
“Hopefully we’ll get another opportunity,” he added, speaking at a news conference Friday evening. “I also think it’s important once again to have these conversations outside of the Capitol with the public and let them have input on exactly how we should move forward.”
But Republicans appeared eager to decamp from Nashville, even temporarily. They churned through dozens of measures over a marathon week, repeatedly cutting off debate despite objections from Democrats. And they swatted away last-ditch procedural maneuvers that would have forced them to consider gun legislation.
“Why would you make the choice to leave and then come back when you could just do it right here, right now?” state Representative Karen Camper, the House Democratic leader, asked Republicans in a committee hearing Friday. She added, “People are yelling and screaming out to us to do something.”