Via Of Arms and the Law:
The Tennessee General Assembly has approved Gov. Bill Lee’s legislation to allow most adults to carry handguns without obtaining a permit, a measure some Republicans sought for years to pass.
The permitless carry bill, which supporters have dubbed “constitutional carry,” passed the House of Representatives 64-29 on Monday night. Just five House Republicans voted against it. The bill was approved in the Senate on March 18 and can now be signed into law by the governor.
The law, which will take effect July 1, allows for both open and concealed carrying of handguns for people 21 and older without a permit as well as for military members ages 18 to 20.
Tennessee legislature passes permitless handgun carry bill, which now heads to Gov. Bill Lee
Congratulations to the citizens of the Volunteer State! I am sure my relatives up there will take advantage of this. Let’s see if we can make this contagious soon for the Sunshine State.
But, Alas! I see that there are always the idiots bound and determined to screw up a good thing:
The particular bill championed by Lee and the NRA does not apply to other types of firearms besides handguns, a point that has drawn fierce criticism from other gun rights groups, including the Tennessee Firearms Association and the National Association for Gun Rights.
Both of the latter groups have recently attacked Republicans in the legislature for not supporting wider-ranging permitless carry proposals, including removing permit requirements for all types of firearms or allowing 18- to 20-year-olds to also carry freely.
Gov. Bill Lee to NRA: Tennessee permitless handgun carry part of ‘public safety agenda’
Our friends of NAGR once again! How come I am not surprised? And if I am not mistaken, my Dear shooting brother Jim K warned me about TFA rubberstamping what NAGR does. Colorado is still stuck with a 15 round magazine capacity after Dudley Brown and his minions gummed up the works for a bill regressing most of the Hi Cap ban and back to 30 round magazines so seeing that they got their asses ignored, makes me feel good for the future Pro-Gun bills in Tennessee.
This isn’t actually constitutional carry. Only those who could otherwise get a permit can carry. True constitutional carry would be if you can own it you can carry it. This only applies to pistols not long arms. it’s a incremental step forward, yes. But it is not constitutional carry. There are other factors involved too.
I watched some of the committee hearings and most of the floor debate. “Permitless Carry” is a more-correct term, as Scott mentions. Towards the end of the debate last night, a Democrat from Nashville tried to stir some stuff by asking the sponsor “If you think this is a God-given right, then why are there so many restrictions on who can carry?” To which the sponsor basically said “stay tuned for my bills next year, sparky. Glad to see you’ll be supporting them.”
For many years, I was heavily involved in the Tennessee Firearms Association and we got a great many things accomplished. Then a couple of things happened and they lost their way. First, the GOP finally won control of both houses and the governor’s mansion for the first time since Reconstruction. I remember publishing a post with the phrase “We’re going to get anything we ask for, now.”
Unfortunately, the response from the GOP leadership in the House was first “we don’t want to squander our success first thing out of the gate by expanding gun rights when there are so many other things we want to accomplish, too” which then morphed in to “we can’t do it right now because there’s an election year coming” only 6 months later. I was in the room when the Majority Whip told some TFA leaders “I thank you for your support in getting us here, but it’s not like you’re going start voting for Democrats now.”
The leader of the TFA went to high school with the Majority Whip. He took it personally when she said that. That’s what ultimately killed the TFA as a political force in Tennessee.
He mounted a campaign to primary her and it ended up being the most expensive primary in state history. With the help of the NRA-ILA, she was unseated in a race that cost each candidate something like $800,000. For a state house seat. In a primary.
Scalp in hand, the TFA decided to go after the Majority Leader next. NRA-ILA felt their point had been made and did not want to pursue it, so in came NAGR with some “helpful activist training.” I remember the meeting where the NAGR guy was introduced and my immediate thought was “oh no baby what you doin?”
Side note: my email got added to NAGR’s list, and I can’t unsubscribe because they require you to give them a physical address which matches what they have on file in order to “verify” that you’re not maliciously unsubscribing someone else. Since they presumably got my name from the TFA, I have no idea what address they have on file.
After NAGR got involved, I left. They started doing what you see now: attacking legislators as being not sufficiently pro gun because the bills they put forth are incremental. I would be surprised at all if they opposed a bill to gift every graduating high school senior an AR15 on the grounds that it wasn’t an M16.
The TFA is not taken seriously anymore by anyone who counts. We only had 3,000 members back in 2008 and we got shit done. Now they just send out emails about how awful it is that this new bill doesn’t include rifles and doesn’t alter federal law about who can possess a firearm.
I’ll grant the NRA can accomplish things when it wants to. But it also actively slows things down quite a bit as well. Maine went constitutional carry after the NRA finally stopped their passive opposition. They spent years giving cover to legislators who would speak a good game and then be absent on days of big votes because they weren’t graded. Local affiliates basically started ignoring the national recommendations and within a couple years we were successful.
On July 1sr, Iowa becomes Constitutional carry