NASHVILLE — Music artists Sheryl Crow and Amy Grant helped lead a group of fellow performers to the Tennessee Capitol on Tuesday. They visited Republican Gov. Bill Lee and then lobbied the legislature's GOP supermajority for new gun restrictions.
The actions follow the March 27 shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville that left six people, including three 9-year-old children, dead. The shooter, who was killed by police, was a 28-year-old who had attended the school as a child and had mental health problems, police have said.
Later in the day, the Republican-led state Senate voted 19-9 to pass a bill to provide new liability protections for gun manufacturers in Tennessee, which has at least 20 such operations.
Senate Speaker Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, abstained from voting on the liability protection law, as did four other Republican senators. Three Republicans joined with the chamber's six Democrats to vote no.
McNally, also the state's lieutenant governor, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican from Crossville, have shown openness to taking some type of action in response to last month's deadly shooting at The Covenant School. Victims included the school head and a teacher, both friends of Lee and his wife, Maria, who had been a teacher.
McNally's action underscored an effort by Lee to enact some type of extreme risk protection order in the state that would allow a judge to remove guns from people deemed to be a risk to themselves and others.
But ardent Second Amendment supporters both inside the state — such as the Tennessee Firearms Association — and now outside the state are fighting back.
The National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action responded Tuesday by issuing an alert to members: "URGENT ACTION NEEDED — Oppose 'Red Flag' Gun Confiscation Orders," the alert said, going on to say extreme risk protection orders would turn Second Amendment rights into a "second class right."
The speakers have been searching for a vehicle to carry some type of legislation with a wide enough legal description in its caption to implement anything from an extreme risk protection order to more modest measures. On Tuesday, one of those bills was shuttled off for consideration in 2024 by its sponsor, John Stevens, a Republican attorney from Huntingdon.
"I was afraid of hostile amendments. It could have carried legislation that does not have current support within the Senate," Stevens said in an interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press, adding it was done to "remove an available legislative vehicle that wasn't needed."
His bill sought to codify a federal court judge's action earlier this year that allowed 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds to carry handguns in public.
"In my opinion, the 18-year-old permitting legislation, it's not needed because it's already the law through the court order," Stevens said. "Just having an extra caption out there for the legislature to potentially mess with (this) will send it to next year."
An amendment
McNally, Sexton and others are now looking at another bill opening mental health statutory provisions. Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, is not supporting the legislation. Neither is House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, although Lamberth has said he favors some modest steps to boost safety.
Using a mental health bill would also allow proponents to bypass the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is headed by Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga. Gardenhire is often a reliable Second Amendment rights vote. But he declared after the shooting he would allow no additional gun bills — either to expand current carry laws or to restrict them — to pass his committee given the environment.
"Leadership has purposely kept me out of any discussion, as well as the governor," Gardenhire stated in a text from the Senate floor to the Times Free Press.
Leaders now have plans to bypass the Judiciary Committee.
Gardenhire said he's hearing plenty from "both sides" from people who don't live in his district or the state. Many are form letters. He said many want him to vote yes on bills that haven't been introduced. He said some are getting "all excited" because a national organization is promoting them. Moms Demand Action has been a constant presence in recent years at the Tennessee Capitol.
"And they think we can do it at the drop of a hat, but we can't," Gardenhire said. "There is a process."
The senator has gotten sideways with some lawmakers and gun-rights groups, among other things moving with most Republicans and the two Democrats on his panel to strip a permitless carry bill that would have allowed people to carry "long guns," including semi-automatic rifles in public, in addition to handguns.
Another bill Gardenhire and others shuttled off to 2024 was a bill that would have limited the prohibition on intentionally, knowingly or recklessly carrying a weapon to the room where judicial proceedings are taking place. It would have allowed people with enhanced handgun-carry permits to carry a weapon during proceedings if the room or building had not posted a sign prohibiting firearms.
The chairman said his panel is focused on a process to avoid making mistakes on legislation — "not that we don't make mistakes, but we do our best not to," he said.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-285-9480.