One way you can always tell that the Tennessee General Assembly (or Georgia) is in session is by how many bills about guns and gun rights are in the news.
That's because our lawmakers are constantly being whipped and tickled by the National Rifle Association and the gun makers who now drive the NRA lobby train.
It happens every session -- or at least it has in recent decades. Last year, even while Chattanooga was in the throes of new efforts to get guns off the streets and trying to solve almost a shooting every other day, our lawmakers in Nashville were busily trying to undo any gun laws -- at either the state or the local level.
And this year, our Tennessee assemblymen are at it again. Meanwhile, Georgia lawmakers and Gov. Nathan Deal last year put the finishing touches on a bill that gave Georgia the most lax gun laws anywhere, allowing guns in bars, churches, airports and certain government buildings.
But believe this: Our Tennessee lawmakers don't want that same lax gun atmosphere around them. Not in the state house. No way. We guess they don't really believe the NRA propaganda that guns everywhere spell more safety.
Last week, our state leaders considered and passed a bill that would allow people to carry a gun in public parks -- think Coolidge Park, Redoubt Soccer Fields, Warner Park, the ball parks beside Signal Mountain City Hall, Harrison Bay State Park -- even if it meant repealing a provision in a 2009 state law that gave local councils and commissions a vote in banning guns in their parks.
But Democrat Sen. Jeff Yarbro, in an effort to derail the bill, added an amendment that would make it legal to carry a gun on the grounds of the state Capitol.
Whoa! On Monday, the House, which already had passed the guns-in-parks bill without the Capitol inclusion, took a whopping 45 seconds to reject the guns-in-the-Capitol amendment, according to the Nashville Post. Now the baton passes again to the Senate, which must decide whether to keep the amendment or strip it. If they keep the amendment intact, the bill must go to a conference committee to iron out differences.
"I think that the hypocrisy is easy to see," Yarbro, of Nashville, told a Huffington Post reporter. "I mean if we're going to take control from local government, we should at least subject ourselves to the same standards."
The truth, however, is that the amendment is not even the half of the hypocrisy.
According to the Tennessean newspaper, the bill still prohibits squirt guns, swords and explosives within 150 feet of a school, but does allows people with Tennessee handgun carry permits to go near school property.
What is still more telling is the bill's original timing.
The bill's sponsor, State Rep. Mike Harrison, R-Rogersville, told Nashville Public Radio last month that he thought the measure would be hospitable to people who come to Nashville for the NRA convention this week.
"We've got 80,000 people coming in here. They need to see the whole city," Harrison said.
Assuming this bill eventually passes -- with or without some cobbled version of the Capitol gun-for-all amendment, hopefully, Tennessee's Gov. Bill Haslam will have the backbone to veto it. After all, as mayor of Knoxville in 2009, Haslam presided over a city vote to maintain a ban on handguns in city parks, according to The Associated Press. At that time, Haslam was a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. He didn't join the NRA until he became a candidate in the 2010 governor's race.
But then, the NRA doesn't really spend much time lobbying city councils and mayors. Come to think of it, the NRA must be slipping a little: After all, the group clearly missed an opportunity to lobby the House enough to ensure getting guns in nearly every hand inside the Capitol.
Come on, guys. What's good for the NRA and good for our parks (and Starbucks, Chipotle, et al) is surely good for you folks in the Tennessee Capitol. Right?