Tennessee’s Not Very Special Special Legislative Session on Guns

That won’t address guns at all

Andy Spears
2 min readAug 21, 2023
Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

In the wake of a devastating school shooting in Nashville earlier this year, Tennessee’s Governor faced pressure to call a special legislative session to address the issue of gun violence.

After much talk and pushback, Gov. Bill Lee did finally call a special session, and it starts today.

However, the call of the session is relatively narrow and the Republican supermajority has promised NOT to take up Gov. Lee’s “Red Flag” bill.

These types of laws are designed to keep guns out of the hands of individuals who are an imminent harm to themselves or others.

“There is broad agreement that dangerous, unstable individuals who intend to harm themselves or others should not have access to weapons,” said Lee, explaining why he’s calling the special session.

Democratic lawmakers have criticized the special session, noting that not only does it not allow for discussion of a full range of options to curb gun…

--

--

Andy Spears

Writer and policy advocate living in Nashville, TN —Public Policy Ph.D. — writes on education policy, consumer affairs, and more . . .