Gov. Lee’s Special Session On Red Flag Laws Is A Slippery Slope (Op-Ed)
Image Credit: Gov. Bill Lee / Facebook
By Don Beehler [contributor to The Tennessee Conservative]
Governor Bill Lee’s call for the Tennessee General Assembly to convene a special legislative session in August to discuss solutions designed to keep Tennessee communities safe sounds like a noble endeavor.
The reality, however, is that a session like this is a slippery slope which could lead to firearm restrictions that punish responsible, law-abiding gun owners and make us all less safe.
Whether such efforts are called “red flag” or “extreme risk protection order,” the result is the same: An incremental victory for those who seek to disarm us completely—in violation of our Second Amendment rights—and responsible, law-abiding citizens being less able to protect themselves and others from violent individuals.
While many who want further legislation regulating citizens’ use of firearms may be well meaning, they are naive in believing that more laws will make us safer. Consider the fact that the cities and states with the most stringent gun-control laws also have some of the highest crime rates in the nation, including murders by guns. Chicago is a prime example.
Then consider how many armed robberies have been thwarted, and lives saved, by quick-thinking citizens who carried firearms and were trained in using them responsibly.
Celebrities who scream the loudest about gun control typically have private armed security and high walls around their homes, something that most Tennesseans simply cannot afford. Perhaps we would take them more seriously if they got rid of their armed security and posted signs on their property stating, “This house has no guns.”
To identify the solutions Gov. Lee seeks, we must first acknowledge that the problems we are experiencing in society are spiritual in nature, and no amount of legislation is going to fix that.
Criminals and mentally ill individuals will always find ways to get their hands on firearms through the black market and other avenues—or they will use other weapons such as explosives, knives, clubs and even vehicles to perpetrate their acts of violence. Where there’s a will, there’s a weapon.
It’s also important to consider the implications of so-called “red flag” laws. First, they declare individuals guilty without due process. Second, who determines the criteria for defining “dangerous, unstable individuals?”
We have already seen people of faith being portrayed as dangerous and hateful, and concerned parents speaking out against perverted school curriculum targeted by the FBI and labeled as “terrorist threats” by the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice.
The potential for abuse is enormous, and even if Gov. Lee is committed to safeguarding our constitutional rights, there is no guarantee those who succeed him as governor will share that commitment.
In light of the recent Nashville school shootings, it’s commendable that Gov. Lee wants to explore ways to help prevent future tragedies like this from occurring. We all want to see the children in our state protected. Providing funding to schools for school resource officers is a good start, but no security measure is foolproof.
Real solutions require a change of minds and hearts, which is why I believe the most effective solution Gov. Lee could offer Tennesseans is to encourage our schools to abandon the radical Left’s agenda, which seeks to normalize perversion, confuse children about their God-given gender and divide society along racial lines.
In place of such dangerous indoctrination, I urge Gov. Lee to provide leadership in our state’s moral education by spearheading an initiative to return our schools to teaching the traditional Judeo-Christian values upon which our nation was founded and blessed.
Radical, I know. But such values used to be commonly taught in the days when we had a more sane, civil and stable society. Clearly, what students are taught in many schools today are only making things worse. Much worse. Hatred, resentment and discontent seem to be at an all-time high.
Let’s go back to what actually works rather than continuing to foist destructive curriculums on children that harm their mental health and leave them floundering for a moral compass, to the point where a simple task—such as defining what it means to be male and female—is controversial.
We can do better. We must do better. The time is right for a real solution that will make our communities safer and healthier.
About the Author: Don Beehler is a retired public relations consultant in Franklin, Tennessee
This doesn’t sound “well meaning” at all – it sounds exactly like the first step toward confiscation. When did Lee join the democrat party?
I think MR LEE is a closet DEMOCRAT we seem to have a lot of them showing up in OUR GOVERNMENT here lately.
These are not well meaning laws. No matter the name they are intended to take the guns from law abiding citizens. Guns have never been the problem so why attack an inanimate object? The object of these laws is gun confiscation….period.
The 2A stands in the way of the Marxists that want total control over you. I was born and raised in TN and would have never dreamed I would see a Republican Governor propose such left leaning laws. I am done with the Republicans and their Marxist agenda.
Back door Gun control> Dem. Bill Lee.
Here’s an idea, instead of taking guns away from law abiding citizens, why not execute those found guilty of using guns in the commission of a crime? Certainly will reduce recidivism.
I am sick of the KNEE JERK reaction of the liberals when it come to our gun laws. AND BILL lee has jumped in on the band wagon. IT seems all you have to do is get a bunch of hand wringing liberals show up with signs, storm the capital, and we get anti gun laws passed. THEY want to blame people who leave guns in there cars, and they get stolen. BUT they don’t want you coming into places armed, it is a catch 22 when it comes to carrying a firearm in our STATE. DONT blame the crook who stole the gun, blame the gun owner who got his car broken into???. AND then we have crazy people who shoot up schools, and the first thing you here is PASS A RED FALG LAW, this has gotten past the point of JUST STUPID
“EXPRESSLY STIPULATED RIGHTS” (Bill of Rights) in a “LEGAL DOCUMENT” (Constitution)
“CAN NOT BE DENIED”, only a change in the document without the “Stipulations” (Amendment) can change the “LAW”.
“Citizens” have “Guns” to protect those “RIGHTS”, and are “AUTHORIZED BY LAW” to use those Guns against “ANYONE” acting “UNDER COLOR OF LAW” to deny those Rights to them,
“without penalties”.
The “TENTH AMENDMENT” make is “VERY CLEAR”, Government was “NEVER ENUMERATED POWER” to legislate “CITIZENS RIGHTS”,
And “CITIZENS” have the “POWER” to “STOP GOVERNMENT” from doing so without penalties.
Between Stipulated Rights and lack of Enumerated powers, James Madison referred to them as being “DOUBLE SECURITY” for the Bill of Rights.
Pass any law you want, just don’t incorporate the “Bill of Rights” as part of the solution.
“It has been said, that in the Federal Government they (Bill of Rights) are unnecessary, because the powers are enumerated and it follows that all that are not granted by the Constitution are retained, that the Constitution is a bill of powers, the great residuum being the rights of the people”.
(The Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, First Congress, 1st Session, pp
448-460. (page 455)
https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=227
“If they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights”. (Page 457)
“IF in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, (though it) may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
G.Washington’s Farewell Address.
I don’t think Law enforcement would be very happy to learn citizens can shoot them trying to enforce a Red Flag laws without any penalties.
This is SPOT ON. Indeed, the first step to confiscation. Watch what legislators say and do around this special session… if it is held.
I think Lee must be a closet Communist . This is the first step towards absolute corruption and tyranny , just like what the Marxists have done to our Alphabet Soup weaponized Government .