The Tennessee Firearms Association executive director told the Influence Watch podcast he is shocked that Volunteer State’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee called a special election, so he could exploit the Covenant School shooting to pass so-called red flag laws.
“In March of this year, there was a school shooting at a place called Covenant School in Nashville, where three adults and three children were killed by a 28-year-old female who reportedly had been a student at the school in her past,” said John Harris, a Nashville attorney, who founded the TFA in 1995.
“April 11, shortly after the shooting, Governor Lee asked the legislature to enact a red flag law – although he called a temporary mental health order of protection. It’s a red flag,” he said.
Twenty-two states have red flag laws, which create a regime for government officials to disarm individuals identified as mentally or emotionally troubled and pose a threat to themselves or others, the lawyer said.
“The theory behind a red flag law is that the police will go out after whatever the procedure and the procedure varies and sees that person’s weapons, typically just seizes the firearms, but leaves the person at loose at large in the community so that they still have access to their potential victims,” he said.
Harris said TFA opposes the red flag laws in Tennessee.
“We strongly believe that red flag laws violate the constitutional principles established by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2022 Bruen decision.
“The Bruen decision itself established a standard that the U.S. Supreme Court has now mandated must be applied to test the constitutionality of any law or regulation that might impact the broad scope of rights protected under the Second Amendment,” he said.
“What the court essentially said is: If an activity possessing a firearm is covered by the scope of the Second Amendment, then it’s presumptively shielded from government infringements,” he said.
“The second prong of that analysis is that if a proposed government infringement a law, a red flag law, for example, is offered that the burden is on the government to show that the national historical tradition,’” he said.
“Essentially, taking people’s guns away, before they’ve been fully adjudicated by the courts wasn’t a thing when the Second Amendment was ratified and understood by its ratifiers, then it is presumptively invalid,” he said.
Covenant Shooter’s Nanifesto Remains Sealed
Harris said he is also concerned that the governor is invoking the Covenant School shooting. However, the dead shooter’s manifesto is still sealed, so a significant part of the mystery of the shooting is being withheld from the public just as the governor is looking to change the state’s gun rights radically. “At this point, uh, there’s very little information that’s been released.”
The TLA has joined The Star News Network in a legal action to force law enforcement officials to make the document public.
“There’s actually a massive lawsuit pending trying to get the manifesto records, so we don’t really know what the motivating factors were for the shooting,” Harris said.
“There’s some hint that it may have been that she was getting psychological or mental health counseling, but we don’t know to what extent,” he said.
“Again, the manifesto itself has not been released, so we don’t have clear indicators of what the motive was.”
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Neil W. McCabe is a contributor to The Star News Network based in Washington. He is an Army Reserve public affairs NCO and an Iraq War veteran. Follow him on Twitter, TruthSocial & GETTR: @ReporterMcCabe.
Photo “John Harris” by John Harris and “Legislative Plaza” is by Andre Porter CC3.0.
