Pro-Gun Bills Killed, Again

[Pat McGarrity]

I've called Rep. McCord's office for comment on his postponement of the Restaurant Carry Bill, however, it's more than probable that he expected it to be killed in the House Criminal Practice and Procedure Subcommittee AKA the graveyard for pro-gun bills.

As for The Permit Confidentiality Bill, a double standard we see all too often is again being applied to Gun Owners, viewed as second class citizens by most of the media and some politicians. For example, it would be unheard of for the same Tennessee papers, including the Communist Appeal and Pravda On The Cumberland, to print a list of illegal aliens, or sex offenders, yet they have printed the list of Carry Permit Holders and our addresses. I'm sure the stalkers appreciate that.

The bottom line - As long as the Anti-Gun Speaker of the Tennessee House, Jimmy Naifeh, (The Grim Reaper of Gun Rights in Tennessee) is in that position, Gun Owners will continue to be treated as if they have less rights than convicted sex offenders and illegal aliens.

In Disgust,

Patriot Pat



By Richard Locker (Contact)
Originally published 02:30 p.m., April 2, 2008
Updated 06:10 p.m., April 2, 2008

NASHVILLE – Two gun bills were killed for the year in the Tennessee legislature Wednesday – including the “guns-in-bars” bill to allow people with gun-carry permits to take firearms into places that serve alcohol.

The other bill would close public access to the identities of Tennessee’s 191,208 gun-carry permit holders – 28,601 of whom live in Shelby County.

Both bills were backed by the National Rifle Association, which had issued an “action alert” to its Tennessee members Friday to contact lawmakers in support of the legislation.

“Of course we’re disappointed but we will continue to support these measures moving forward and will work very hard to get them passed at a later date,” NRA spokeswoman Rachel Parsons said. “We are very committed to these two pieces of legislation in Tennessee.”

The guns-in-bars bill was deferred to 2009 by its sponsor, Rep. Joe McCord, R-Maryville. McCord asked the House criminal practice and procedure subcommittee to examine the issue as part of its summer and fall bill-study agenda and return with a recommendation to the 2009 legislative session.

Bill sponsors usually seek such a postponement and study committee only if the legislation appears headed for a defeat. The bill had passed the Senate 24-6 on Jan. 16 and was one of several bills to expand Tennessee’s gun-carry permit law to allow guns to be carried into more places where they are currently restricted.

Last month, the same House subcommittee killed a bill to permit faculty and staff at colleges and universities to carry handguns onto campus, another to allow guns in state parks and another that would have let people who have been voluntarily admitted to mental health hospitals to get gun-carry permits.

The permit confidentiality bill was the focus of some intense legislative maneuvering. It first won the subcommittee’s approval – but only after most of its members who opponents left the room for other business in other committees.

But later, members who oppose the bill plus House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, and the newest member of the General Assembly, Rep. Karen Camper, D-Memphis – who was appointed to the subcommittee just minutes earlier – arrived in the hearing and asked that the bill be reconsidered. The panel agreed and then voted 5-4 to approve a motion to defer the confidentiality bill until 2012. The motion was made by Judiciary Committee Chairman Kent Coleman, D-Murfreesboro.

That effectively kills the bill only to 2009, however, when the next legislative session convenes. Naifeh exercised his authority as speaker to vote in any House committee or subcommittee for the second week in a row – both times to defeat bills that the NRA had supported.

Parsons said the NRA believes information identifying gun-carry permit holders should be private. “There is no public service done by making that information public knowledge. Most importantly, personal security trumps public curiosity.

“People get (permits) for different reasons but many go through all the permit process, including gun safety training and background checks, because they are concerned about threats against their life. A woman who is trying to stay away from a stalker now has her address and information public. These people deserve to have the information private,” she said.

But Frank Gibson, head of the Tennessee Coalition on Open Government, said its important to keep public records open. “It’s a matter of public safety: there are recent media reports of convicted felons given permits to carry concealed weapons and if the records were closed, there would be no way of finding that out. It’s not a matter of privacy when you ask the government for a special privilege to carry your gun outside of your home or business and the public has a right to know, particularly in cases where the government issues these permits to people who the law says should not have one.”

It is also likely that supporters of the bill overreached by including a provision that would have made publication of the identity of any permit holder a Class E felony in Tennessee, subject to a 1-6 year prison term and a fine of $3,000.

Earlier Wednesday, Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell told the county’s legislative delegation that he opposed the guns-in-bars bill.

“Reasonable people do silly things when they have too much to drink, and silly people with guns are lethal,” he said. “I’m an NRA member and I support the Right to Carry law and the Second Amendment, but I view it somewhat like free speech. You can’t go into a crowded theater and shout ‘Fire!’ and I think there has to be some limits on where you can carry a gun.”

Luttrell also said the number of gun-carry permit applications in Shelby County reached 5,500 during 2007 – double the previous year. The sheriff’s office has to submit a background investigation report on each permit application from the county and he asked lawmakers to divert $15 of each $115 permit fee to sheriffs’ offices to cover the growing costs of the investigations.

Currently, the TBI, which also conducts a criminal-background check, and the Department of Safety, which issues the permits, receive most of the permit fee.