Tennessee Republicans Have Had 15 Years to Fix This Gun Law

By Ken Berry MD
(This is a reprint used by permission of a Substack Post by Ken Berry MD)

Since 2011, Tennessee has had Republican control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the General Assembly, along with a political culture that claims to respect the Second Amendment. So why is Tennessee still struggling to remove a law that makes it a crime to carry a firearm “with the intent to go armed”?

That phrase sounds harmless until you understand what it means. It does not merely apply to a man carrying a gun to rob someone, threaten someone, or terrorize the public. Under Tennessee’s current law, “intent to go armed” can mean exactly what it says: carrying because you intend to be armed. That means a father carrying a firearm because he intends to be ready to protect his children can be treated as committing the very offense the statute describes. He can be stopped, arrested, charged, and forced to prove later that he fits within an exception, even though his intent was protective rather than criminal.

The current Tennessee Code still says, “A person commits an offense who carries, with the intent to go armed, a firearm or a club.” That is not ancient parchment from the Statute of Northampton in 1328 sitting in a museum. That is current Tennessee law. A first violation is a Class C misdemeanor, and later violations can be punished more severely. (law.justia.com)

The phrase “intent to go armed” has older roots than the modern criminal code. It traces back to an older legal idea of going armed “to the terror of the people,” which was aimed at threatening, frightening, or breaching the peace. In that older framing, the problem was not merely that a citizen possessed a weapon. The problem was that he carried in a way that terrorized others or disturbed the public peace. But Tennessee’s modern statute does something much broader. It makes the intent to be armed part of the crime itself.

That turns the right to bear arms upside down. A robber carries with criminal intent. A father walking his children through a parking lot after dark carries with protective intent. Those are not the same thing. Tennessee law has blurred that difference for too long. The Constitution protects the second man. It does not protect the first. Current Tennessee law treats them exactly the same.

That is why this issue matters. It is not about excusing threats, violence, intimidation, felons in possession, or reckless conduct. Tennessee can and should punish actual misconduct. But peaceful carry for lawful self-defense is not misconduct. It is the very thing the right to bear arms protects.

In 1989, Tennessee recodified Title 39, the criminal code. That happened under Democratic control of Tennessee state government. Democratic Governor Ned Ray McWherter, Democratic House Speaker Ed Murray and Democratic Lieutenant Governor/Senate Speaker John S. Wilder all made this our current law. This was not a Republican gun law. It was a Democratic-era anti-carry provision preserved still in the modern criminal code.

Democrats did not invent every word of this law in 1989, but Democrats controlled the machinery of state government completely when this old anti-carry framework was carried forward into the modern code Tennesseans still live under today. If Democrats still controlled Tennessee government, no one would be surprised to find this Democratic-era anti-carry statute still sitting in the code. What is shocking is that Republicans have had complete control of Tennessee government since 2011, and “intent to go armed” is still there. Tennessee currently has a Republican trifecta, meaning Republicans control the governor’s office and both legislative chambers. (ballotpedia.org)

Now, I do not care much for the word “RINO.” It is thrown around too often and too lazily. But in this case, the evidence is difficult to ignore. On the Second Amendment, Tennessee voters have been promised conservative, Republican government. What they are getting, at least on this issue, looks far too much like Democratic-era gun policy with an (R) beside it.

To be fair, Tennessee Republicans have made some Second Amendment progress since 2011. They deserve credit for this. Tennessee has moved in a more gun-friendly direction in several ways, and many pro-Second Amendment voters are grateful for that. But that does not answer the question raised here. In fact, it sharpens it. If Republican leadership can move other gun bills, why can’t it repeal a Democratic-era anti-carry statute that has already been declared unconstitutional by a Tennessee three-judge panel? A few good votes around the edges do not excuse leaving a bad law at the center of the criminal code.

The following timeline is what makes this so hard to excuse. In 2008, the United States Supreme Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller. Washington, D.C. had effectively barred ordinary people from keeping functional handguns in the home, and the Supreme Court said the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, including self-defense. Heller corrected the first great error: the idea that the Second Amendment does not really protect an individual citizen. It does. (supreme.justia.com)

Then in 2010, in McDonald v. Chicago, the Court rejected the argument that the Second Amendment might bind the federal government but not the states. McDonald held that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment, which means Tennessee cannot treat that right as optional. That point matters here because Southern governments have a long and ugly history of deciding which citizens could be trusted with arms. The Fourteenth Amendment was designed in part to stop states from trampling fundamental rights. If Tennessee law treats the peaceful intent to be armed as suspicious, Tennessee law has drifted back toward an old and dangerous instinct: trust the government first, and the citizen second. (supreme.justia.com)

Then came 2011, when Republicans gained unified control of Tennessee government. From that point forward, this was no longer a matter of Democrats keeping their own anti-carry statute in place. Republicans had the power to clean up the code. They had the votes. They had the committees. They had the governor’s office. They had the political mandate. And yet, they did not fix it.

In 2016, the Supreme Court decided Caetano v. Massachusetts, a case involving a stun gun, but the principle was bigger than the device. The Court rejected the notion that the Second Amendment protects only weapons that existed in the 18th century. The right to keep and bear arms is not frozen in the technology of 1791. The First Amendment protects radio, television, and the internet even though the Founders wrote with quill pens. The Second Amendment is not limited to muskets and flintlocks either. Still, Tennessee did not fix the problem. (supreme.justia.com)

Then came New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022. This was the case that should have made Tennessee’s “intent to go armed” statute impossible to defend when applied to ordinary peaceable carry. New York required citizens to show a special need before they could carry a handgun publicly for self-defense, and the Supreme Court struck that down. Bruen held that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a right to carry arms publicly for self-defense, and courts may not simply balance that right away because the government claims public safety. The government must show that a firearm regulation fits the nation’s historical tradition. Once Bruen was decided, Tennessee Republican members of the TGA had no serious excuse left. If ordinary citizens have a constitutional right to carry arms publicly for self-defense, then Tennessee cannot treat the intent to be armed for lawful self-defense as the crime. A constitutional right cannot depend on the government pretending the exercise of that right is suspicious. (supreme.justia.com)

Then came Hughes v. Lee. In 2025, three brave Tennesseans, Stephen L. Hughes, Duncan O’Mara, and Elaine Kehel, along with Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation, did what the legislature had failed to do: they forced the constitutional question into court. A Tennessee three-judge panel declared Tennessee’s “intent to go armed” statute unconstitutional, void, and of no effect. The official Tennessee courts page says the panel entered a final order on August 22, 2025, declaring Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 39-17-1307(a) and 39-17-1311(a) unconstitutional, void, and of no effect. (tncourts.gov)

That should have been the end of it. A Republican governor and a Republican attorney general had a clean constitutional off-ramp. They could have said, “This Democratic law predates modern Second Amendment doctrine, the court has spoken, and the legislature should repeal it.” Instead, the state appealed the very clear ruling. And they are still fighting. The Tennessee Court of Appeals calendar lists Hughes v. Lee for oral argument on June 23, 2026, before the Court of Appeals, Western Section. (tncourts.gov)

That choice matters. A Democratic-era anti-carry statute was finally struck down, and Tennessee’s Republican executive branch chose to keep defending it. If Tennessee’s criminal code creates confusion when the Constitution is applied to it, the answer is not to keep defending the bad statute. The answer is to repeal it and write laws that punish actual misconduct, not peaceable carry. AP reporting on the Hughes ruling noted that the decision invalidated Tennessee’s “intent to go armed” law and described the ruling as influenced by Bruen’s historical-tradition test. (apnews.com)

The legislature has had another direct chance. In 2026, HB2064 and SB2467 were introduced to repeal the criminal offenses of unlawfully carrying a firearm or club “with the intent to go armed” and carrying or possessing a weapon in certain public recreational areas. The official Tennessee General Assembly bill page says the bill, as introduced, repeals those offenses. (wapp.capitol.tn.gov) Yet the House bill reached “No Action Taken,” and the Senate version was deferred to 2027, according to reporting on the bill’s committee status. (tennesseestar.com)

So let us put the timeline plainly. Tennessee’s Republican supermajority has had fifteen years since taking full control of Tennessee government. Ten years since Caetano. Four years since Bruen. One year since Hughes. And still, in 2026, the words “with the intent to go armed” remain in the Tennessee Code.

At every stage, the permission became clearer, and the excuses became weaker. The Constitution did not become harder to understand. The law became harder to defend. Tennessee Republicans have had eighteen years of warning since Heller, sixteen years of warning since McDonald, fifteen years of unified state control since 2011, four years since Bruen, and now a Tennessee three-judge panel ruling. A supermajority should not need more permission than that to repeal an unconstitutional gun law. The Supreme Court has already done its part. The Tennessee court has now done its part. The question is why Nashville still has not done its part.

Why is this hard?

Republicans control the governor’s office and both chambers of the General Assembly. They have the votes. They have the committee chairs. They have the Supreme Court precedent. They have the Tennessee court ruling. They have repeal legislation sitting right in front of them. Yet the law still sits there, treated as if it is good Republican law that must be managed instead of bad Democrat law that must be removed. That should bother every Tennessee conservative. A Republican supermajority should not act like the Constitution is a negotiation with the criminal code. The code must yield to the Constitution, not the other way around.

When Nashville treats an unconstitutional gun law as difficult to repeal, the message to ordinary Tennesseans is unmistakable: your rights are clear enough for campaign speeches, but not clear enough for committee rooms. The right to bear arms means the right to bear arms. It does not mean the right to bear arms only after Nashville finishes balancing, studying, deferring, appealing, amending, and explaining. It does not mean the right to bear arms only after a citizen pays lawyers to prove what the Constitution already says.

Tennessee does not need to wait on another lawsuit to do the right thing. It does not need another court order. It does not need another legislative session wasted on procedural hesitation. It needs a General Assembly and a governor willing to say plainly that an old Democratic-era anti-carry statute does not belong in a free state’s criminal code. Republicans did not create this law, but they now own its continued existence. A supermajority cannot claim helplessness. It cannot point forever to Democrats from 1989 while refusing to clean up the code in 2026. If a legislature has the votes to repeal an unconstitutional law and chooses not to, then it is no longer merely an inherited Democratic overreach .

At some point, when a Republican supermajority leaves an unconstitutional law on the books, it stops being the Democrats’ fault, and becomes their own.

The Democratic-era origin explains how this law got here; Republican inaction explains why it is still here.

Works Cited

1. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-17-1307 — Carrying or possession of weapons. Current Tennessee Code provision containing the phrase “carries, with the intent to go armed, a firearm or a club.”
2. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). U.S. Supreme Court case recognizing that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes such as self-defense.
3. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). U.S. Supreme Court case holding that the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller applies against state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.
4. Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. 411 (2016). U.S. Supreme Court case rejecting the argument that Second Amendment protection is limited to weapons in existence at the founding.
5. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). U.S. Supreme Court case holding that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense and that firearm regulations must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
6. Hughes, et al. v. Bill Lee, et al. — Tennessee Courts Special Case Page. Official Tennessee courts page noting that on August 22, 2025, the Special Three-Judge Panel entered a final order declaring Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 39-17-1307(a) and 39-17-1311(a) unconstitutional, void, and of no effect.
7. Final Order, Hughes v. Lee, August 22, 2025. Three-judge panel order in the Tennessee case addressing the “intent to go armed” statute and related parks statute.
8. Tennessee Court of Appeals Oral Argument Calendar. Official Tennessee courts calendar listing Stephen L. Hughes, et al. v. Bill Lee, et al., case W2025-01327-COA-R3-CV, for oral argument on June 23, 2026, before the Court of Appeals, Western Section.
9. HB2064, Tennessee 114th General Assembly. Official Tennessee General Assembly bill page stating that, as introduced, the bill repeals the criminal offenses of unlawfully carrying a firearm or club with intent to go armed and carrying or possessing a weapon in certain public recreational areas.
10. SB2467, Tennessee 114th General Assembly. Companion Senate bill summary and sponsor listing for the 2026 repeal effort.
11. Associated Press report on Hughes v. Lee ruling. Reporting on the Tennessee three-judge panel’s ruling striking down the “intent to go armed” law and noting the ruling’s connection to Bruen.
12. Tennessee Star report on HB2064 committee action. Reporting that the House committee took no action on the bill and that the Senate version was deferred to 2027.