Tennessee Bill Allowing Open Carry of Long Guns Survives Initial Hearing

Even though Tennessee allows for the open or concealed carry of handguns without a permit (so long as the individual can legally possess a firearm), a little-known quirk in state law generally forbids the open carrying of a rifle or shotgun unless it’s unloaded. Last year lawmakers introduced a bill that would change the state’s open carry statute to allow for the lawful bearing of firearms in general, not just handguns, but the legislation didn’t come close to winning approval in both chambers. 

Now lawmakers in Nashville are trying once again to tweak the open carry law, but are running into the same resistance from law enforcement that helped derail the bill last session. 

HB 1189 was introduced by Representative Rusty Grills (R-Newbern) and was met with some condemnation in the House Civil Justice Committee. He said the bill would “put the state more in line with what the Constitution originally meant.” He also said other states had laws permitting people to carry long guns.

Richard Archie, from the Tennessee Firearms Association, spoke in support of the bill and cited centuries-old legal precedent and statute as justification, dating back to the founding of Tennessee. He said the state changed its laws in 1989, which had originally allowed people to carry long guns, and he wanted the state to go back to the way it was before the law changed. 

… After Archie spoke, some of the state’s law enforcement leaders spoke against the bill. They included Elizabeth Stroecker, from the Department of Safety and Homeland Security. 

Stroecker said she understood where Grills “was coming from” with the bill, but said law enforcement was concerned that the proposal would lead to issues similar to those seen in other states that allow rifles and other guns to be openly carried. She said bringing “large rifle, high-capacity weapons” to areas like schools and places of worship or to areas where tensions can run high, such as the Department of Children’s Services, would cause “chaos.”

“It will cause a lot of people to be worried, and they will then be calling law enforcement, saying, ‘Hey, we’re in a lockdown. Can you please come out and get rid of this person, or make this person leave?’ And law enforcement’s response will have to be, ‘They are lawfully doing that. They have to stay there,'” Stroecker said. “We feel that the current law is sufficient to protect yourself, carrying a handgun.”

She also said she did not think it was necessary to cause additional security issues in Tennessee, and in response to a question from Todd over the 2022 Supreme Court “Bruen decision,” and said that there was confusion surrounding it. She said it did not say states could not regulate weapons — it instead said that New York had passed restrictions that were too arbitrary and were not tied to a reasonable regulation.

Despite Stroecker’s concern, open carry of long guns is legal in 80% of the country, according to the gun control group Everytown, and there really aren’t many incidents like those she described. In Virginia, open carry of both handguns and long guns is unregulated, and while it’s not that uncommon for me to see someone openly carrying a pistol when I’m at my local grocery store or gas station, I’ve never run across anyone open carrying an AR-15 or a semi-automatic shotgun in those settings. In fact, the only time I’ve seen that is at the Virginia Citizens Defense League’s Lobby Day rally in Richmond, where the bearing of a rifle is at least as much a political statement as it is a means of self-defense. 

Though open carry of rifles and shotguns is perfectly legal in 40 states, HB 1189 is going to face some fairly long odds in becoming law. As I mentioned, legislators ran an identical bill last year, but neither the Senate or House version were ever brought to the floor for a vote. 

The House Civil Justice Subcommittee approved this year’s legislation in a 4-3 vote last week, and the Senate version is slated to be heard in a subcommittee today, but given the vociferous objections to the bill from law enforcement agencies to HB 1189, gun owners are going to have to mount a full-court press to get either bill to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk before this year’s session wraps up on April 25. 

Tweaking Tennessee’s law would definitely bring the state closer to the original intent (and practice) of the Second Amendment, but if lawmakers balk at the change Second Amendment advocates could always move their efforts from the statehouse to the courthouse. Prohibiting the open carry of long guns certainly isn’t a part of the national tradition of gun ownership, after all. I have a sneaking suspicion that most judges would look at the current law in Tennessee and argue that even if the open carry of long guns is prohibited, there are plenty of other ways for folks to exercise their right to bear arms in the Volunteer State, but frankly, that’s the kind of interest-balancing BS the Supreme Court has said is unacceptable when looking at the constitutionality of gun laws.