On February 27, 2020, Bill Lee announced that he will be filing an “administration bill” to adopt “constitutional carry” in Tennessee. He spoke about how this was the necessary step compelled by the language of the 2nd Amendment.
At this time, the draft of this administration bill has not been released and, to my knowledge, is nowhere to be found on the state legislative website. Citizens have no opportunity to see it, study it, comment on it or object to it in advance of the expected choreographed presentation on March 3.
It is important, no critical, to define the concept of constitutional carry. The 2nd Amendment declares that there is a “right” of the citizens to keep and bear arms. The courts have said that this right exists independent of and pre-existed the constitution. The 2nd Amendment merely provides that this independently existing fundamental human right “shall not be infringed” by government.
When TFA was formed a quarter century ago, “constitutional carry” was called “Vermont carry”. That was because of all the states, Vermont was the only one which protected the rights of citizens to carry firearms in its constitution. No other state so recognized the existence of this right. Tennessee certainly did not.
Thus true “constitutional carry” refers to a construct whereby the state recognizes that citizens have a constitutionally protected right to own and carry firearms without any required state permit or other conditions precedent to the free exercise of that right. That is true constitutional carry.
At present, Tennessee’s law (TCA 39-17-1307(a)) makes it a crime for a citizen to carry a firearm with the intent to go armed. That statute – that premise – is totally incompatible with a system based on “constitutional carry” or the recognition that the right is one protected from infringement .by government. At present, Tennessee law creates a number of “defenses” or “exceptions” to a criminal charge of illegally carrying a firearm. These defenses include things such as a) you had a state issued handgun carry permit or b) you did so at your own home. But these are “defenses” to a criminal charge. You can still be arrested and charged and you only have the right to present the defense at the criminal trial.
So, if you are a constitutional conservative what do you do if you are presented with the governor’s announcement that he is filing a constitutional carry bill? Easy, you wait. You wait until the details are transparent – which they are not at this time. You wait until the bill is available to review, discuss and analyze. You wait until you can have input as a citizen.
One thing you don’t do when there is an announcement of something that remains unseen, unreviewed and unanalyzed is to accept it without question or inquiry.
Right now, we don’t have the bill’s final language. We do have a clear definition of constitutional carry but we don’t know if the Governor’s and others’ description of this ‘to be filed’ legislation is accurate at this time.
Hopefully, we will see it before there are any votes on it. Hopefully, we will have a chance to provide feedback before there are any votes on it.
Hopefully, it will in fact be true constitutional carry – that is a declaration of a right which shall not be infringed. Hopefully, it will not be, as has been offered in the past, merely another defense or exception to a criminal charge that a citizen is illegally carrying or possessing a firearm.
We can hope that Bill Lee truly knows what constitutional carry is and that he is taking the lead to do something that many of those legislators who stood with him at the podium on Thursday have themselves refused, repeatedly, to do in the past.
We can hope but we cannot know until we have transparency, true transparency, on the proposed legislation. Let’s not pass it only to find that its not truly constitutional carry.
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