Despite a landmark court victory for constitutional rights, Tennessee’s top officials are digging in to salvage anti-gun statutes rooted in post-Civil War oppression.
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In a moment that should have signaled a decisive victory for Second Amendment advocates across Tennessee, a three-judge panel recently struck down two of the state’s most deeply entrenched restrictions on carrying firearms: the “intent to go armed” statute (Tennessee Code Annotated § 39-17-1307(a)) and the “parks weapons ban” (§ 39-17-1311(a)).
The decision—rooted in both constitutional principle and historical reckoning—ruled these statutes “unconstitutional, void and without effect,” according to a report by Tennessee Firearms Association.
But rather than accept this clear mandate, the state’s leadership is doubling down, using the people’s own tax dollars in a campaign to preserve laws with origins in 19th-century Jim Crow measures.
The court’s ruling couldn’t be clearer: policies that criminalize the mere intent to carry arms, and blanket bans on carrying in parks, infringe on the fundamental rights Tennesseans have held since the state was founded.
As articulated by the 1871 Supreme Court of Tennessee in Andrews v. State, “The right to keep arms, necessarily involves the right to purchase them, to keep them in a state of efficiency for use…and to keep them in repair. And clearly for this purpose, a man would have the right to carry them to and from his home, and no one could claim that the Legislature had the right to punish him for it, without violating this clause of the Constitution.”
Instead of safeguarding these freedoms, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Governor Bill Lee have chosen to challenge the ruling in court, seeking an emergency stay to keep these laws on the books.
Click the link to read the whole article: Tennessee Defy Court, Fight to Preserve Jim Crow Gun Bans
