With each new effort you make to make it easier for Tennesseans to possess guns in pubic places, I grow more concerned with what you and the Republican controlled State Legislature seem intent on doing, i.e., to create a Wild West gun culture with most people carrying a firearm all the time. TN is awash in firearms. Thousands of firearms are stolen from vehicles in TN every year. Tennesseans (much like the folks who attended the Kansas City Chiefs celebration, are worried about public shootings. It has nothing to do with the location of an event, who’s in attendance, or how many police officers are on the scene. It has everything to do with the number of unregulated firearms you’ve promoted in our state. I used to take visitors to TN down to Lower Broadway. Not anymore. The potential for a shooting to take place there is far too great for my comfort zone. I warn my 52 year old son against going to a jazz club downtown because of the location and the lack of sufficient street lighting. I worry about the presence of unregulated guns on our city’s greenways and in our parks. I worry about the ball games at schools and the local baseball fields near the greenway. With the enormous number of unregulated handguns in TN there’s almost no place that can be considered totally safe from gun violence. Look what you and your colleagues have done to the mental well being of your citizens. It’s appalling. And don’t tell me and every other Tennessean that the Constitution ensures the right to possess firearms. That’s hog wash. In retirement in 1991, Burger said that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Please think about your constituents, Governor. It’s not too late to stand up to the idiots in the TN legislature. You can do something about the number of uncontrolled firearms being carried in and around the citizens of TN who don’t carry guns and who quite possibly are unaware of the presence of so many guns in our daily lives. YOU CAN DO BETTER.!
