TFA Commentary: Gov. Lee’s Special Session Proclamation ‘Makes It Clear He Is on Board with Calls from Democrats like Justin Jones and Joe Biden to Enact Gun Control in Tennessee’

by John Harris

Months ago, while the Legislature was still in its regular session, Governor Lee asked them to enact his Red Flag law which was his immediate, some might say knee-jerk – response to the Covenant School murders. The Legislature rejected that request, deferred almost all remaining 2nd Amendment legislation to 2024 and instead adjourned. Before most of them could get home, Governor Lee announced that he was going to call them back into a special legislative session to consider and pass his Red Flag proposal.

Numerous Republican state legislators have openly stated that they will not support Governor Lee’s Red Flag demand and that they were opposed to a special session. Numerous Democrat state legislators have sided with the Governor.

The Governor’s tantrum where he insists that his Red Flag law be enacted continued on August 8, 2023. On August 8, 2023, Governor Lee issued a press release to announce that he had issued a proclamation for a “public safety special session.” As expected by some, the Governor made his proclamation to open up numerous parts of the Tennessee statutes and called for the Legislature to address at least 18 different categories of topics in his gun control package that he labels “public safety.”

In his press release, the Governor states that he “will present legislative and budget priorities during the public safety special session to keep Tennessee communities safe, support law enforcement and address mental health” – notably missing is any reference to a Red Flag law. In that press release, he states that he wants the Legislature to do many things that, if considered at all, should only be considered during a regular session where citizens and the news media have the opportunity to read the legislation and proposed amendments, discuss those issues with peers and their elected legislators and voice any support or opposition to the proposals. Instead, Governor Lee appears intend on ramming through an administrative gun control package in just a few days that will effectively preclude the public (or most legislators) from having the opportunity to consider, comment on or even take an organized position on this gun control package.

For example, Governor Lee operates under the delusion that a short and typically choreographed special session is an appropriate tool to force through a package covering 18 diverse topics with an untold number of individual bills and amendments. Many of those topics are actually areas, like mental health, that are highly controversial, complicated and likely would require expert testimony in the committees that might take up those issues.

The press release identifies 1) “Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) Report Implementation”, 2)
“TennCare Mental Health Coverage Waiver”, 3) “Mental Health Workforce Challenges”, 4) “Reforms for Mental Health”, 5) “Strengthening the Identification of Individuals Arrested for Felonies”, 6) “Human Trafficking”, and 7) “Safe Storage” of firearms as topics to be addressed in the special session. It is curious that none of those are clearly or directly relevant to the Covenant School murders which are apparently the original reason behind Governor Lee’s gun control initiative.

However, Governor Lee’s proclamation makes it abundantly clear that he is on board with the long standing calls from notable Democrats like Justin Jones and Joe Biden to enact gun control in Tennessee.

Item 12 on his list is his demand for a Red Flag law. Of course, he does not call it a Red Flag law but what he describes is nothing more than a Red Flag law. Rather than just being candid and stating he wants a Red Flag law, Bill Lee urges for the passage of a “temporary mental health order of protection” as he did in April 2023 shortly after the Covenant School murders. Other topics include topics related to mental health, mandatory mental health reporting requirements, expanding mental health resources and services and giving law enforcement access to “information about individuals who are subject to mental health commitments.”

He also calls for increased reporting to law enforcement and law enforcement information access regarding people are “arrested for felonies”, “information about victims of violent offenses”, law enforcement access to criminal and juvenile records (presumably even after those records are to be sealed or expunged), trying juveniles who are 16 or older as adults, “blended sentences for juveniles”, and offenses where crimes are committed by a combination of adult and juvenile offenders. Again, none of these are related to the Covenant School murders.

Then, he calls for enacting laws to “encourage” the “safe storage of firearms” but he curiously qualifies that by stating that such laws would not include “penalties” for failing to safely store firearms. It is not clear what he thinks such a law might be but it could include documenting in public or law enforcement records instances where someone has been accused or found to have not safely stored a firearm (a step paving the way for future criminal statutes?), perhaps creating standards for what constitutes “safe storage” (that could be used against gun owners in civil litigation?), perhaps trying to make gun owners civilly liable if their firearms are not in “safe storage” and then are used to commit a crime, or perhaps forcing people to attend “gun safety” classes on how to store firearms or the harms that unsafely stored firearms posses to Bill Lee’s view of what society should be.

He also wants the Legislature to look at stalking offenses. Perhaps he is not aware that Tennessee already has a stalking statute that has 3-4 categories of offenses all but one of which are felonies. Perhaps the thinks that there is some form of stalking that is occurring in Tennessee that is not under the umbrella of the current statutes.

Then he adds in more topics including “school safety plans or policies”. He adds offenses related to committing “mass acts of violence” or threats thereof, as if existing laws on murder, homicide and assaults are somehow allowing “mass violence” to slip through the criminal justice system without prosecutorial opportunities. Of course, the Covenant School murders also have put on the national radar the issue of “human trafficking” so he throws that topic in the expedited sausage making mill as well.

At the end he has an item that calls for any legislation that pertains to “the structure or operations of state or local courts” as if there was a problem with the 3rd branch of government that has now been highlighted by the Covenant School murders.

The Governor’s press release and proclamation make clear that first, he never should have called this special session because all of these issues are topics that could be examined in five months when the Legislature returns to regular session in January 2024. None of these calls for the expedited urgency of a special session. None of them present “consensus” topics – liking giving a billion dollars of taxpayer funds to Ford Motor Company – where all the details were worked out and the special session was a mere choreographed formality. As Senate Republican Caucus Leader Jack Johnson recently told TFA, it just does not appear that there is a constitutional justification for a special session.

Another thing that is clear from the scope of the proclamation is that very little of the Governor’s Democrat-influenced gun control agenda would do anything at all that would have prevented the Covenant School murders. One thing that would have probably saved lives at Covenant School is if Bill Lee had kept his 2018 campaign promise to pass laws that allowed teachers or school employees to carry firearms on campus – but he broke that promise repeatedly over the last 5 years. Indeed, Bill Lee’s administration (Department of Human Services) is presently threatening licensed day care facilities that they would be violating regulations and putting their licenses are risk if they hire state licensed armed security guards to protect children while in daycare facilities.

Tennessee Firearms Association opposes the Governor’s call for a special session including his call for Red Flag laws or any other gun control agenda. Here are a few reasons why.

• The United States Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen established a high standard relative to the rights of American’s to keep and bear arms and the 2nd Amendment’s mandate that this right “shall not be infringed”. As explained by the Supreme Court, any laws that infringe any activity (not just “keep and bear”) that falls under the broad umbrella of the Second Amendment is presumptively unconstitutional. The burden is on the government – here Bill Lee and the Legislature – to prove to a constitutional certainty that any proposed (or existing) law or regulation that might infringe a right protected by the Second Amendment is a law or regulation that existed as part of the “nation’s historical tradition” at the time that the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. None – not a single one – of the proposals in the Governor’s proclamation that would infringe the rights protected by the Second Amendment are proposals that would survive the Bruen standard. Indeed, the application of that standard has been discussed by Senator John Stevens and Senator Jack Johnson (among other Legislators). It is no secret that the Bruen standard applies.
• Special sessions generally address a narrow topic, are of an emergency nature, and are rare. They should not be used to open up massively diverse areas of the law since that is what the regular session if intended to do and one reason why the legislature is constitutionally limited on the number of days that it can be in “session”. Here, the problem is that it appears unlikely that the details of any of these proposals are going to be circulated to the public for review, comment, discussion or objection and, consequently, Bill Lee is attempting to cast a total eclipse against the “sunshine” that is necessary for crafting public policy in a constitutional republic. The constitutional urgency for a special session is nonexistent.
• The special session proposes a Red Flag law that 84% of Tennesseans oppose. That detailed poll – which disclosed to respondents that the Governor’s proposal would leave “dangerous people” in the community after police seize their guns – showed that most Tennesseans prefer to remove the mentally ill person who is dangerous from the community and get them treatment rather than to leave them, while still in a dangerous mentally ill condition, in the community with access to potential victims.
• TFA interviews with dozens of Republican legislators show no support at all for a special session – period.
• Reporting by the Tennessee Star exposed plans by progressives, radicals and far left extremists (probably paid to come here from out of state) to use the special session as a national call for gun control and as means of attacking the Second Amendment. Yet, Bill Lee insists on putting Tennessee, Nashville and the state’s Legislators (and employees) at risk again from the same kinds of “community activists” that burned Nashville’s courthouse in marches in 2020 which included reports that now Democrat Representative Justin Jones could have faced felony charges for his involvement in the uprising.

You can join the fight to help stop “Gun Control Lee” and his efforts to pass more gun control in Tennessee, not just a Red Flag law. Join the battle at www.REDFLAGDOWN.com #RedFlagDown

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John Harris is the Executive Director of the Tennessee Firearms Association.
Photo “Bill Lee” by Bill Lee. Background Photo “Tennessee Capitol” by FaceMePLS. CC BY 2.0.

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