PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Re-committed to APPROPRIATIONS
Last Action Date: May 6, 2024
The threat of guns on Capitol Hill prompts a rare show of spine from Gov. Bill Haslam :: 02/19/2016
After years of making love to firearms in (almost) every conceivable way, the state legislature's Republican supermajority is mainly known — for good or bad — for expanding gun rights.
Yet for all the new places guns now are allowed — bars, restaurants, public parks — the state Capitol complex remains perhaps Tennessee's most prominent gun-free zone. That makes the stench of hypocrisy — like dog dookie stuck to your shoe — emanate strongly from each and every proud NRA card-carrying Republican.
So maybe it should not have surprised reporters last week when Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey announced, toward the end of one of his regular media availabilities, that he was about to yank down the signs prohibiting firearms in Legislative Plaza.
"I'm ready to take the signs down anytime. It's a proven statistic — indisputable — that if gun carry permit holders are allowed into a facility, it is safer, not less safe," Ramsey said, citing something he'd probably heard on Fox News.
Ramsey said House Speaker Beth Harwell was all for lifting the gun ban too, and it would have been done at the start of this year's session except the state highway patrol, which guards the plaza, had some issues. Ramsey said troopers had "logistical concerns," but he dismissed them with a wave of his hand.
Harwell and Ramsey could accomplish this by fiat, the Senate speaker said, and there was no need to change state law. For her part, Harwell confirmed later that she's looking into it, although she laughed when asked if it was her idea, as Ramsey claimed.
According to Ramsey, any of the state's 400,000 handgun carry permit owners could merely drop their pistols, along with their car keys and cellphones, in the Tupperware dishes at the security entrances to the plaza. Once they showed their handgun permits to the highway patrol troopers at the station and went through the metal detectors — which we're guessing remain necessary to reveal disallowed tactical knives or machetes — they could strap back on their guns and walk proudly through the plaza into lawmakers' offices, committee hearing rooms, the cafeteria, wherever they please.
Ramsey said the signs could come down in a matter of days, and it all looked like a fait accompli — until Gov. Bill Haslam caught wind of it.
In an unusual display of fortitude, Haslam suddenly was telling the media that Ramsey needed to check himself. The governor said he is the one who decides whether guns are allowed in Legislative Plaza — not the speakers — and he produced citations of state statutes to prove it.
Haslam, who doesn't feel really strongly about much of anything, said he feels really strongly that guns should stay banned from the Capitol (where his office just happens to be). As for Legislative Plaza, he said he's willing to think about lifting the ban — but not until the highway patrol works through the logistical problem of how to rescreen visitors going from the plaza to the adjacent Capitol.
"We don't think that people should be able to bring weapons in here," Haslam said. "This is a secure building. We've got metal detectors; we've got troopers with guns."
Of lawmakers and Legislative Plaza, he said, "That's their work environment. If they decide they want to do that, I'm willing to have that conversation. But we feel really strongly about the Capitol not being that way."
Ramsey still insists the speakers control Legislative Plaza. Since the highway patrol reports to Haslam, though, the governor seems to enjoy the upper hand here.
It's easy to see this as yet another particularly odorous example of hypocrisy on guns, and to demand that these lawmakers lie in the beds of their own making. Haslam never has been a big proponent of expanding gun rights, but at the same time he's made only feeble attempts to stop it. Now he's evidently biting his nails over the possibility he himself might have to exist in this shoot-'em-up society that he's helped create.
But as Democrats pointed out, it's not only public officials who'd have to deal with guns at the legislature, it's the public too. They raised the specter of accidental shootings in the crowded hallways and warned of dangers to children — not to mention adult visitors like Scene reporters.
"With an unlimited number of loaded weapons moving throughout the packed plaza on any given day, we are seriously concerned for the safety of thousands of children who visit the Legislative Plaza each year," Nashville Democratic Rep. John Ray Clemmons said. "Introducing loaded weapons to a crowded space like this poses an unnecessary risk."
Then there's the possibility of intentional shootings. Let's face it, not everyone at the legislature seems all that trustworthy. Some of them, in fact, clearly are disturbed and angry. At the Texas legislature, they're thinking about installing panic buttons in offices after a heated confrontation between gun nuts and one lawmaker.
We asked Harwell how she felt about the possibility of the famously volatile Rep. Jeremy Durham going armed at the legislature.
"Any other questions?" she said.
