Tennessee’s GOP Governor Bill Lee has tilted at windmills since the Covenant School shooting. He’s used the opportunity to call for a red flag confiscation law in the Volunteer State. Lee wants the law badly enough that he’s called for a special session in August to take up the bill.
Why August and not now? Gov. Lee wanted the law during the spring session but not a single member of the legislature filed such a bill. To say there was no appetite for infringing on the due process and Second Amendment rights of gun owners in Tennessee would stand as a monumental understatement.
Lee’s plans to give the gun-grabbing radicals and the mainstream media the entire summer to hammer legislators with desperate pleas to fears and emotional appeals to do something haven’t proven to be popular.
After all, if the Gov really wants to keep kids in schools safe in his state, he’d sign legislation allowing Tennessee teachers and school staffers the option to carry firearms during the school days. Not a single student in America has been shot or killed in schools that have armed teachers. Maybe Governor Bill is unaware of that fact. Perhaps someone could whisper that little truth nugget in his ear.
Lee thinks the NRA’s proposal of using existing due process requirements and laws to help those experiencing a mental health crisis to get the help they need (and be temporarily disarmed for their safety and those of others in the community) is too “extreme.” Sure it is, Bill.
Tennessee already has broad civil commitment laws on the books. However society has shifted in the last three generations from committing mentally ill people to allowing them to roam freely in society without addressing the underlying issues.
Unlike the Governor’s proposal, the current Tennessee civil commitment law provides individuals due process. The Tennessee law has a procedure that is based on actual medical assessment by a doctor that someone, as a result of a mental health problem, is an imminent threat of harm to themselves or someone else. If that mental health determination is made, a court can issue an order to involuntarily admit the individual to a psychiatric hospital for up to two weeks for mental health evaluation and potential treatment.
And even if the NRA’s proposal to, in the words of Gov. Lee, “to round up mentally ill people” was even partially true, how many disturbed transgendered people were shooting up Tennessee schools in the 1940s and 1950s when dangerously mentally ill people were being institutionalized?
Cough. Zero. Cough.
Instead, Lee claims his proposed new law will “protect” the gun rights of Tennessee residents. The reality is just the opposite.
Lee’s red flag law won’t offer due process rights to those who are accused before stripping them of their gun rights. In fact, Lee’s “dream law” would have a much lower threshold for confiscating guns than existing civil mental health commitment laws and it won’t provide any mental health treatment. Instead it will just grab peoples’ guns.
If the political misdirection of claims of protecting gun rights sounds familiar, that might be because Barack Obama said he was a strong believer in protecting gun rights, too. And none of Governor Lee’s proposals would have protected the kids at the Covenant school. Certainly not like a couple of armed teachers would.
If you’re a Tennessee resident or considering a move to Tennessee like many of my fellow Illinoisans, it might be time to send the good governor an email or a real one via snail mail. Tell the governor to protect due process rights while implementing solutions that better protects school kids – even better than school resource officers.
You might also communicate with your state representative and state senator. Thank them for standing up to Governor Lee’s demagoguery while protecting and defending the due process and Second Amendment rights of Volunteer State gun owners. It might also be a good time to put a bug in their ear about implementing armed teachers while you’re at it.
