Controversial efforts to pass new gun control laws failed last week in a Tennessee special legislative session aimed at responding to the Covenant School massacre.
The Covenant School, which is affiliated with Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, made national headlines earlier this year after a shooter, an alumna of the Covenant School and a woman who claimed identity as a man, murdered three nine-year-old children and three adult staff members. Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee proposed a red flag bill which would permit state officials to take firearms away from those considered at risk to themselves or others, calling a special session at the end of August to pass the legislation. The bill nevertheless failed to advance during the session.
Lawmakers instead approved a handful of bills that increase reporting efforts for human trafficking, allocate state grants toward mental health agencies and school safety, and incentivize gun safety by providing free firearm locks to Tennessee residents.
Matthew Nowlin, a director for Conservative Christians of Tennessee, said in an interview with The Sentinel that Lee, who knew two of the Covenant School victims, pushed for the special session despite unexpectedly high amounts of opposition toward the red flag law.
“He thought in the wake of the Covenant shooting, because of his personal involvement with some of the folks, that there would be widespread support for the session,” Nowlin remarked. “It was a simple calculus of what embarrasses him less: to have a session, to not have a session, or to have a session that yields nothing.”
Parents of children who attend the Covenant School were present in the Tennessee State Capitol throughout the session to advocate for the red flag bill, launching a nonprofit and a political action fund earlier this summer to lobby for the legislation, as previously reported by The Sentinel. Critics of red flag laws note that the statutes deprive citizens of gun rights without due process and without the ability to defend themselves in court.
Shawn Graham, the other director for Conservative Christians of Tennessee, said in remarks to The Sentinel that lobbyists will continue to push for red flag laws once lawmakers reconvene.
“The special session did not in any way mitigate what we are going to be facing in later sessions. We come back into session in January: we are going to be facing the exact same issues again,” Graham commented. “They still want to get their red flag bill. These groups are not going to magically go away in January just because there is not a special session.”
Nowlin and Graham contended that rank-and-file Republican lawmakers will likely continue to resist efforts to pass red flag laws but said that elected Republican leadership may fail to do the same. They expect that additional pushes to enact red flag laws will come under the guise of more mental health or school safety legislation.
Brent Leatherwood, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission and a fellow Covenant School parent, released a letter earlier this year in support of the red flag bill even as he faced criticism for leveraging Southern Baptist institutions to advance interests contrary to the denomination’s conservative churches. One source familiar with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission asserted to The Sentinel that Leatherwood was one of the unnamed Covenant School parents reported to be heavily involved in delaying the public release of the transgender-identified shooter’s manifesto.
Surveys indeed show that red flag laws are unpopular among the vast majority of Republican voters and many independents. The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has meanwhile asserted that the Tennessee bill differs from a red flag law since only police can “file a petition before the court to have firearms confiscated” and an individual can “only be dispossessed of the firearms” if he or she finishes a court process.
