Nearly 10,000 people submitted feedback on potential gun and public safety legislation in the first two weeks after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee solicited public feedback in May when announcing his plans to call a special legislative session on Aug. 21.

A majority of the input called for changes to Tennessee gun laws, mirroring state and national polling trends indicating a bipartisan majority of Tennesseans and Americans support increased gun restrictions. In the feedback to the governor’s office, many supported safe storage laws, expanded background checks and banning assaultstyle weapons, while those opposed to new laws expressed concern about opening the door for increased regulations down the road.

Public feedback backs new gun laws

Wait, there is a portal for commenting? WTF?

I had to look it up and it was not easy to find it. just a small four letter link in the Governor website’s Newsroom. Nothing in the main page of the official page, no link easily available. It was not till today I found out it even existed, and I don’t recall having been mentioned in the news or even my local rag (Daily News Journal AKA Section F of the Tennessean”)

However, by the “results”, it seems that Opposition had no problem finding it or, more than likely, had internal help sharing the link quietly and being the “majority” in the comments.

Fellow Tennesseans (and other Gun Rights Defenders) click on this link and let the governor know how you feel about more useless gun control.

Ohio boy, 2, shoots his pregnant mother, 31, in the back with pistol he found in nightstand: Mom and baby both died after emergency C-section

A two-year-old boy shot his pregnant mother in the back with a pistol he found in her nightstand, killing her and her unborn child.

Police in Norwalk, Ohio rushed to the scene on June 16 after receiving a frantic call from the mother, Laura Ilg, 31, moments after she was shot in the back.

Her Marine husband Alek, 28, who was at work at the time, also called dispatchers, telling them he ‘received a phone call from his wife “screaming something about my son and needing to call 911″‘, cops said.

Ilg was rushed to nearby Fisher-Titus Medical Center, where surgeons performed an emergency cesarean section but they were unable to save the baby. Ilg was tragically declared dead around three hours later.

This is a fucking tragedy.

That’s what this is.

A boy lost his mom and will have to deal with the emotional fallout of that when he’s old enough to understand what he did.

A husband lost his wife and unborn child.

The gun was left unsecured in a drawer.

This could have been prevented with the purchase of a cheap lock box.

But now a family is destroyed.

I have two kids.

My nightstand gun is in a Liberty biometric safe for this exact reason.

All of my guns are behind steel if not on my body.

Lock up your guns.

But gun control advocates hope a new push for reform in the wake of the Covenant School mass shooting this year will help to close what they say is a dangerous loophole in domestic violence cases that allows offenders to keep their guns.
Tennessee is one of several states that require accused domestic abusers to temporarily surrender their guns under a protective order. But while some states require the guns to be surrendered to law enforcement, Tennessee, along with other states like Texas and Florida, allow what is known as third party dispossession, meaning the
person can transfer ownership to a friend or family member. Advocates say that’s where the problems start.

Advocates hope new laws could help close gun loophole

Notice how the quote begins with a statement they contradict almost immediately: “Domestic abusers” do not get to keep their guns but must relinquish to a third party, but since it is not the police, for the “advocates” it is the same as if they never did it in the first place.

Now, before going any further, I want to make clear that any person who clearly physically abuses a partner or is a proven danger of future violence against wife/husband and kids, should not have access to firearms. But this has to be done properly which means we do not restrict civil rights by taking the “word” of a divorce lawyer or the next-door neighbor mad at the guy because the family dog pooped in his front yard and had words about it. I know of friends going through what was supposed to be friendly divorces, being hit by a false accusation of spousal abuse because the opposing shyster told the wife she would get more leverage and monies for the kiddies that way.

So, how do we balance civil rights with security? By eliminating the punishment imbalance within the Red Flag laws. And that is only accomplished if those involved pay dearly if they are rushing or bullshitting the courts. Make depriving gun ownership without a cause or by deception a Class D felony which comes with 2-12 years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000. And that should cover anybody involved in the violation: Spouse, lawyers, “witnesses,” LEO’s and even sawbones for hire who lend their credentials to be used as legal abuse. Oh yes, for government types, the fines do not come out of the taxpayer’s pocket but their own and they can be paid at once, deducted from their salaries and/or deducted from their pensions.

As for safekeeping of the weapons by the police, once the judge orders the property to be returned, the local fuzz has 24 hours to return the items in the conditions they were taken or be subjected to penalties.  Any damage or loss of property is to be replaced, repaired or refunded at retail value within 30 days and the officers or personnel assigned to their safekeeping be penalized for failing to properly secure private property entrusted to them.

This is just some ideas a top of my head. Of course the Opposition will call it “poison pills” which would ruin their intentions which had nothing to do with keeping people alive and more to try and disarm us.

Over in Facebook, some people in my timeline have taken slight offense about some of the memes I posted about this event. I can have a bit of a dark sense of humor and they should not be surprised about it. But the deaths of these people were a tragedy that could have been avoided and I believe J.Kb. may post something about it from the engineering standpoint, so I won’t go into it other than to say the designers tried to reinvent the wheel and came up with paper picnic plates. The info that has come out so far indicates that the submersible was built around the principles of social politics rather than the laws of physics.

OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement that all five people in the vessel, including CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, “have sadly been lost.”

The others on board were two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

5 people on Titanic submersible killed after implosion, Coast Guard says (wpbf.com)

This is absolute PR bullshit, sorry. This was nothing more than a very expensive carnival ride that went catastrophically bad because the simple tenets of safety and preventive maintenance were not followed. And I bet the passengers were assured (and believed) that the sub was super-duper-safe even though they signed paperwork stating they knew they could die. Emotion for having a “cool” experience overrode due diligence and as the saying goes, you pay your monies, you take your chances.

And that is my opinion.

Carry on.

Sorry for the lack of posting, but I have been both uninspired and busy with some other stuff. Truthfully, sometimes you feel like you are repeating yourself because gun control bullshit cycles over and over and you get tired of hosing it down. And that some cyclical BS also comes from our side, makes you wonder if you have actually made any inroads at all.

And just to add something pretty, a pic taken by Oleg of me trying to rein in a dangerous redhead… (I know, it is repetitive).

Abby is a delightful and funny young lady with the ability to brighten a day just by being around.

OK, I will try to come up with some blogging material soon.

No politics, just glorious action and beautiful violence.