SPRINGFIELD, Tenn. – Gun issues continued to dominate the race for governor as it entered its last full week Monday.
Speaking to reporters at a campaign stop in Springfield, Haslam appeared to have changed his position on an issue that has pitted Tennessee’s biggest employers against gun-rights activists – employers’ current right to ban employees from bringing guns onto their property.
Later Monday, the Haslam camp said he misheard reporters’ questions and still favors giving handgun-carry permit holders a right to keep guns in their locked vehicles at work regardless of their employer’s policies. That’s consistent with a stand he took early this year in a gun-issue survey by Tennessee newspapers.
Democrat Mike McWherter, campaigning south of Nashville, continued attacking his opponent on the issue and said it raises questions about his leadership. “I can’t keep track of where he is on any of these issues nowadays. … He’s flip-flopped on so many different positions, I don’t know where he is and I don’t think the voters of Tennessee know where he is either.”
Gun issues exploded into what had been a lackluster race last week when Haslam told the Tennessee Firearms Association that he would sign into law – if the state legislature passed it – a bill abolishing the state’s handgun-carry permit system.
That would allow anyone who isn’t banned by other laws to go armed, without the training and background check required by the permit system.
Following up on other gun issues Monday, reporters asked Haslam his views on other gun-law changes that Second Amendment activists have proposed, including allowing gun-carry permit holders to take their guns onto employer parking lots whether the employer wants them or not — including school employees with permits keeping guns in their cars at public schools.
Haslam said, “My position has always been, whoever is in charge of that – it’s like a bar, the bar owner should be able to decide what happens there. The schools – the local school boards should be able to decide. Whoever has control over that property should be able to decide what happens there.”
Question: “But currently it’s a state ban on guns in public schools. So you want to do away with the state ban?”
Haslam: “No I wouldn’t. I would not touch that ban on any kind of handguns in schools.”
But later Monday, Haslam campaign spokesman David Smith said the candidate’s position has not changed and that he had misheard the question.