Haslam won’t be addressing NRA meeting
Nashville — When more than 70,000 gun enthusiasts descend on Nashville for the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting this week, they won’t be hearing from one prominent Tennessean: Republican Gov. Bill Haslam.
NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker commended the governor’s office for helping bring the convention to Tennessee. But she said the NRA was unable to accommodate a speaking role for Haslam at the Friday opening of the event that will feature several potential Republican presidential candidates.
“It is a very lengthy program, and we’re trying to accommodate the 2016 candidates,” she said. “So unfortunately there wasn’t time to include everyone.”
The speakers Friday include U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence,
former Texas governor Rick Perry, former U.S. senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Also welcoming the NRA at the meeting is Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who has announced he is not running for president.
“Most hotels are booked during the convention within a 10- to 15mile radius,” Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA’s managing director of public affairs, told The Tennessean newspaper.
The newspaper said more than 400 exhibitors are expected for the conservative organization’s annual convention, which it said will also include speeches from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and millionaire Donald Trump. The convention will have concerts, meetings, forums, auctions, breakfasts and children’s activities. And lots of guns for sale.
Haslam has had a strained relationship with some gun rights advocates ever since he ran for his first term as governor in 2010. In that race, his GOP rivals criticized Haslam, who was then the mayor of Knoxville, for his failure to join the NRA until after he became a candidate, and for his past membership in Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group co-founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Haslam as mayor also presided over a 2009 city council vote that kept in place a ban on handguns in some of the city’s parks. That issue has come to a head again this year, as state lawmakers have moved to do away with local government control over whether handgun carry permit holders can be armed in parks, playgrounds and ball fields.
Both chambers of the state legislature recently passed versions of a bill to remove the local option, but the measure has been complicated by an amendment adopted in the Senate that would also allow permit holders to be armed within the Capitol complex.
The House is scheduled to vote today on whether to go along with that change, although Republican leaders in the lower chamber have expressed a desire to strip off that amendment.
House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, said addition of the Capitol to the bill was encouraged by Democrats to make it more likely for Haslam to veto.
The flap over the Capitol guns amendment has thrown the timing of the guns-in-parks bill into question. Sponsors had hoped to enact the measure before the NRA came to town.
Haslam told reporters last month the meeting of the gun lobby should not dictate state agenda.