Tennessee Lawmakers Clash Over Bill Expanding Use of Force

In even the most gun-controlled states in the nation, you have the right to defend yourself from a violent attack. Most states, however, don’t allow for individuals to use deadly force when their lives or the lives of others aren’t being threatened. 

Texas is a notable exception. The law in the Lone Star State allows for deadly force to be used to stop the “imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime,” as well as to prevent a suspect from fleeing “immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property,” so long as the person using force reasonably believes that the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means or that the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.

Tennessee may soon join Texas in allowing for deadly forced to be used in some circumstances where someone’s life is not directly threatened. At least, that was the original intent of the legislation. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have approved a bill that supposedly would expand the use of deadly force under certain conditions to prevent arson; burglary; robbery; aggravated cruelty to animals; and grave sexual abuse. 

The legislation passed along party lines, but not before some rancorous debate on the House floor. 

“We were taught you don’t kill people over property is because they are not putting at risk an innocent human life,” Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson said. “What this legislation seems to be doing is lowering that threshold significantly and substantially, and the department is going to have to reteach in future classes for those who get their lifetime permit that you can now kill people over property, and I don’t think that is right.”

Other Democrats who opposed the legislation resorted to personal insults against the bill’s sponsor. Democratic state Rep. Justin Jones took a shot at Capley’s appearance during the debate.

“I think the people of your district deserve better, and I hope you will be very serious in considering legislation like this, and you can laugh all you want, but I can see your answers are nonexistent just like your hairline,” Jones said before he was ruled to have broken the rules of the legislative body.

I think both Pearson and Jones’ criticisms are off-base, and Jones’ in particular was completely uncalled for. While the Senate version of the bill did include language allowing deadly forced to be used to prevent trespass, theft, and damage to property, the House amended the legislation and limited deadly force to those five crimes I mentioned above, and only under specific circumstances. 

It’s those circumstances that has raised concerns within the Tennessee Firearms Association. 

Despite being framed as a “protection of property” measure, the statute, as amended in 2026, expressly prohibits the use of deadly force unless there is an imminent threat of death, serious bodily injury, or grave sexual abuse to a human being, or on circumstances where lesser force would expose a person to those same risks. In practical effect, the amendment does not create an independent right to use deadly force to defend property. Although the 2026 Amendment has new language suggesting an expansion of the affirmative defense of using force to defend property, it does not do that. The 2026 Amendment contains essentially the same person-centered threshold of imminent threat to a human that already governs Tennessee self-defense law under Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-11-611. Once the rhetoric is stripped away, the amendment appears to have changed nothing – nothing other than potentially misleading the public and tricking them into making choices for which the consequences are felony charges.

The defect in the legislation is that it was clearly filed and marketed as a property-rights reform. However, as enacted, it entirely denies property owners the ability to rely on deadly force to protect property unless the facts independently amount to a classic self-defense scenario.

Adding to that, the bill, as adopted by the House, does not allow someone to use deadly force to prevent the theft of property. The amendment states in part:

A person who is not engaged in conduct that would constitute a felony or a Class A misdemeanor and who is in a place where the person lawfully resides is justified in using deadly force against another to protect property… When and to the degree the person reasonably believes deadly force is immediately necessary to prevent the other’s imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or aggravated cruelty to animals; The person reasonably believes the property cannot be protected or the other’s actions terminated by any other means; and… There is an imminent danger to the person or a third person of death, serious bodily injury, or grave sexual abuse; or The use of force other than deadly force to protect or terminate the other’s actions would expose the person or a third person to a risk of death, serious bodily injury, or grave sexual abuse

The TFA says the amended bill “provides no meaningful independent basis to defend property in circumstances where existing self-defense law would not already apply,” adding that, “for citizens promised reform, the enacted measure appears less like a restoration of rights and more like legislative deception or, worse, constitutional incompetence.”

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee hasn’t given any indication about what he plans to do with the legislation, but based on the TFA’s analysis it sounds like it won’t matter much one way or the other. When you add this to the legislature’s adoption of a bill that actually lessens the punishment for reckllessly discharging a firearm while the sponsor claims it puts more teeth into the law, it wasn’t a banner week for Republican lawmakers in the Volunteer State. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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