From WKRN: With special session now just under 10 weeks away, Gov. Bill Lee has been hosting lawmakers at the Governor’s Residence every week to d
From WKRN: With special session now just under 10 weeks away, Gov. Bill Lee has been hosting lawmakers at the Governor’s Residence every week to discuss ideas.
“My biggest takeaway is that he’s interested in doing the special session,” Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis) said. “Secondly, he’s open to ideas.”
Parkinson and Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) made the trip last week.
“I think the governor is really trying to get something done,” Campbell said. “I admire him for doing that because he faces a lot of headwinds.”
Much of that headwind comes from Lee’s own Republican party and lobbyist groups along with them, like the Tennessee Firearms Association. That organization last week called Lee’s emergency relief protection order (ERPO) plan an ‘Alice in Wonderland scenario.’
“His party is not on board entirely with what he wants to do,” Campbell said.
In Gallatin on June 8, Lee said he’s only interested in talking to lawmakers and constituents and alluded to the frequent legislator meetings.
“My focus right now is meeting with legislators and I’m doing that on a very regular basis,” he said. “And making sure I understand their intent and they understand me, as well.”
The governor is facing frequent pressure from both sides to either officially call the session or cancel it. He reiterated today that it’s coming.
“You’ll see a call when we get much closer to the session, which is generally how we do that,” Lee said. “Part of that is because we’re getting input from members of the General Assembly.”
At the end of session, Lee proposed the ERPO to separate guns and weapons from people courts prove are a threat. But Republicans in both the House and the Senate say they’re not interested.
“I don’t think that’s the right avenue that we need to be looking at, at this point,” Sen. Mark Pody (R-Lebanon) said. “Just because we take one certain type of weapon away, we’re still not getting them the help that they need.”
Pody admits he doesn’t think hardening schools is the answer either.
“Even if we made every single school safe, that doesn’t mean that movie theaters or something else would not become the target because we made the schools so safe that we just opened up everything else,” he said.
Instead, like many other Republicans, he’s focusing on mental health, something Parkinson also says he wants.
But Parkinson doesn’t want it to stop there. He mentioned wanting to enact some legislation to keep firearms away from minors, like tougher punishments on parents and guardians whose children possess them. Parkinson also said he wouldn’t mind seeing tougher punishments for guns and weapons left in cars.
But at the end of the day, he ultimately said he wants to see something get through.
“I’m extremely, cautiously optimistic about that much,” Parkinson said, holding his thumb and pointer finger about an inch apart.
Democrats as a whole have been pushing for more gun control. But as a superminority, those pleas appear to be falling on deaf ears outside of the governor.
