Staff Photo by John Rawlston A display of guns for sale is seen at Carter Shooting Supply on Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.Also read
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Tennessee state Rep. Andy Holt, R-Dresden, sent a letter to President Obama on Tuesday, telling him to "take your gun control and shove it."
The rude statement comes on the heels of Holt tweeting Monday in support of the armed anti-government protesters who took over a remote national wildlife refuge in Oregon and just after the president's Tuesday announcement that he will take executive action to tighten restrictions on gun purchases by implementing more thorough background checks.
Holt said in a phone interview with The Associated Press that although he doesn't agree with the protesters' tactics, he supports the goal of getting the federal government to turn over public land to the Western states. (Let's hope he doesn't want to make the federal government give the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Tennessee and North Carolina.)
Holt has faced his own legal fight with the federal government over allegations of environmental violations at his northwestern Tennessee hog farm. The Environmental Protection Agency last year announced it was seeking up to $177,500 in fines against Holt for discharging more than 860,000 gallons of waste water (think pig slop) from lagoons on the farm without the proper permits. An inspector in 2011 found improperly buried hogs on Holt's farm and photographed hog waste being pumped from the overflowing lagoon into a nearby creek.
Holt said his case "is just another example of how the intrusive and tyrannical power of the federal government can make or break people." Holt used similar words this week about the Oregon "protest of an onerous, tyrannical federal government." Then, Tuesday, after the president announced his executive action to close the loophole that requires only licensed gun dealers, but not gun show sellers, to get background checks on gun buyers, Holt invoked James Madison's Federalist Paper #46.
Holt said the founding father maintained that states have the power to oppose the federal government through legislation. He said the constitutionality of Obama's actions is irrelevant due to the fact that the president cannot make states enforce federal policy.
Ah, yes - another "states' rights" defense, this time for the federal Second Amendment. The Second Amendment, by the way, is not threatened by the president's announced executive action. If you and your neighbor and the suspected terrorist on a no-fly list pass a background check, you can all happily buy a gun.
The saddest thing about the president's announced executive action, however, is how other, less-right-wing-radicalized Tennessee politicians reacted. They may as well have been a chorus:
* Rep. Chuck Fleischmann - "Yet again the president has taken to grandstanding instead of addressing real issues. Rather than focusing on criminals and terrorists, these executive actions go after the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens."
* Sen. Bob Corker - "It's not hard to understand why so many Tennesseans fear that the president will abuse his authority "
* Rep. Scott DesJarlais - "President Obama should focus on real threats to our safety like radical Islamic terrorists."
* Sen. Lamar Alexander - "First, the president should send his proposal to Congress instead of making yet another end run around it.
* Rep. Stephen Fincher - "The president should be focused on implementing a comprehensive strategy to defeat radical Islamic terrorism - one that doesn't involve stripping law abiding citizens of their Constitutional rights.
* State Sen. Bo Watson - "Do I believe that the president should be making these kinds of executive orders? The answer is no. And I think Tennessee has every right to challenge those executive orders. "
Whoa. Wait a minute. Wasn't it Congress that just last month refused to deny gun sales to suspected terrorists on the FBI's no-fly list? And wasn't it some of these same state lawmakers - the ones screaming foul over overreaching federal tyranny - who last year stripped Tennessee cities (and citizens) of the right to declare parks, ballfields, churches, company parking lots, restaurants, bars (and now college campuses) as gun-free zones?
Talk about overreaching tyranny. (Watson told the Times Free Press on Tuesday that the state does have the authority to nullify city and county gun bans because "counties are the creation of the states and therefore our legal reach is greater.")
Apparently, tyranny is in the eyes of the beholder.