Tennessee Lawmakers Ponder Gun Rights Change to State Constitution

Tennessee is a very pro-gun state. Yes, they had a special session a couple of years ago designed explicitly to pass gun control, but guess what happened? Nothing, really. A couple of lawmakers made asses of themselves, one even got the idea she could win a US Senate race and got curb stomped, and no new regulations came about.

But while the state constitution does include something about gun rights, there’s a little issue with it. There’s a phrase that represents a bit of an issue.

Now, lawmakers in the state are trying to address that.

While many laws passed during the legislative session take effect immediately or within a year, some legislation takes multiple years to go into effect.

The legal change that takes the longest to come about is a constitutional amendment.

…

Though the official process takes many years, lawmakers can propose constitutional amendments at any time. Currently, there are more than a dozen constitutional amendments proposed in the 114th General Assembly.

Here are some of the changes lawmakers hope to make to the state constitution over the next few years.

…

Currently, the state constitution gives the general assembly the right to regulate the bearing of arms “with a view to prevent crime.” This proposed amendment would eliminate that qualifier and instead grant Tennesseans the right “to keep and bear arms,” and prevent the general assembly from passing any laws on firearms at all.

That is huge.

I know. That’s what she said.

Anyway, this would be a significant change, in part because the general assembly is looking to give up power. Lawmakers tend to like to keep their options open, at best. At worst, they want to have all the ways to screw with people they can find. Limits on their authority is something most don’t like, especially on something like guns. They want the option.

This would remove that option entirely.

They’re talking about giving up the authority to make laws on a given topic. That just doesn’t happen.

Now, that doesn’t mean this is going to go through. Constitutional amendments at any level of government are rarely sure things. A lot of people are going to have opinions on this sort of thing and some of those are going to be vehemently opposed to them on principle. Others are going to be uncomfortable with closing the door on gun laws entirely.

However, if this passes, that will be a massive gun rights win in Tennessee.

It should be noted, though, that the state constitution doesn’t require them to pass gun control. The fact that they’re not doing it now is a good thing, but ending the ability for future iterations of the general assembly to do so will preserve gun rights in a way that will be far more profound.

So, I’d love to see this pass, and not just because Tennessee is my fall-back state should Georgia go full anti-gun at some point. However, if it doesn’t, it’s not the worst thing in the world, at least for the time being.

Again, it’s not like lawmakers there are tripping over themselves to pass gun control as it is. That’s not going to change in the next few years, much to some local governments’ chagrin.