A Governor's Sleight of Hand

How Bill Lee got away with doing nothing

It was a shabby scene of institutional weakness this week as the hamstrung “special session” to combat gun violence in Tennessee lurched to an agonizing conclusion - with enough blame for both floors of the state Capitol.

The responsibility for this extraordinary policy mess now sits heavily upon Governor Bill Lee and also the House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

Lee had convened the session but never visibly tried to influence it, as governors normally do. His heart seemed not to be in it. Sexton, in his turn, tried to impose stringent new rules of personal conduct - no members to speak out of order, no visitors to wave signs or make loud noise - but much of it misfired. In the end, the speaker presided over visible chaos.

In his post-session news conference, Lee commended the Covenant School parents who had labored long for justice and stronger gun laws to protect Tennesseans. They had given everyone “hope.” Legislators, in their wrap-up statements, spoke of success. Nobody I know bought into any of this spin.

But Lee’s own heart no longer seemed to be in the effort. He always seemed to be holding back from any truly proactive engagement in the task that he himself had set out for others. The session appeared driven by political fear alone - and ultimately weighed down by a strong sense of collapsed leadership and also lost opportunity.

‘Get Used to Seeing These Faces’ - Leaders of the Covenant Families Action Fund have been in the forefront of lobbying efforts with the Tennessee General Assembly. From left, David Teague, Sarah Shoop Neumann, Becky Hansen, Melissa Alexander, Mary Joyce. Photo courtesy Kathy Chambers

Those parents chose much harsher words to describe what actually happened and offered a starkly different postmortem - a snapshot of failure and much disrespect at the hands of elected officials. One of the outspoken Covenant School parents, Sarah Shoop Neumann, put it succinctly on Tuesday afternoon, saying the special session had produced “no meaningful action.”

She went on, “The divisiveness we have all witnessed makes us long for a unified community,” she said. “We need legislators on both sides of the aisle to be able to have respectful, thoughtful debate regarding potential solutions to end gun violence."

Melissa Alexander, another Covenant mother, used different words. “We were man-splained, interrogated, silenced, locked out of meetings, and insulted. This lack of action is a choice they are making and speaks volumes about their lack of compassion and their priority of personal agendas over the people of Tennessee.”

“The shooter,” she added, “confronted our children with guns. Now you are stabbing our families - and all Tennesseans - in the back.”

How did this happen? How did we get to this low point of tearful frustration and missed opportunity for public safety?

First, it was clearly the preferences of the gun-industry’s lobbyists - always invoking the Second Amendment, ever fearing that one little bit of regulation might lead to lots more - that seems to have constrained both governor and legislators over all. Lawmakers generally were fearful of any danger of political retaliation, especially in Republican primaries to come.

One of these lobbyists, throughout the summer, made and released flattering video interviews of friendly lawmakers making the correct message points - especially messages that scorned the one thing Governor Lee had suggested: a new “extreme-risk protection order” regime to get guns away from dangerous people. This immediately hardened lawmakers in their opposition and ultimately caused Lee to cool on his own advocacy.

Another early tip-off of things to come might have been Lee’s early declaration of the timing of the special session: He said it would not commence until August 21. In the days and weeks following the Covenant School murders, community emotions were highest - thousands of young people and parents in Nashville formed a human-chain of interlocking arms from Children’s Hospital to the Capitol - but Lee said the session would not begin until mid-August. By that time, schools everywhere would be back in their fall sessions, making it harder for students as well as parents turn out in large numbers as before.

Lee’s office said this timing was driven by scheduling challenges of legislative leaders, that they could not re-convene any sooner than the third week of August. But it seemed there was more than that at work: A preference for discharging some of the high emotions that came from the Covenant murders. With schools back in session, it would be much more difficult for students and parents to replicate anything like the loud mass emotional outpourings of citizen rage that were unleashed before the summer break.

This timing would also be more to the liking of legislative leaders. And it wasn’t until last week that everyone learned of Speaker Sexton’s new rules of conduct that had been devised over the summer for keeping the Capitol corridors quieter and more orderly for his members.

We should also remember Governor Lee’s odd handling of that “citizen comment” exercise that seemed to go nowhere. He made a major point of inviting Tennesseans to submit their comments, via the administration’s own website, but when the volume of comments soon exceeded the 20,000 level - and The Tennessean reported overwhelming supportive of more gun-control - that mountain of citizen comments became inconvenient data for the Lee administration. I saw no further official use made of those many comments.

Ultimately, much of the legislature’s rancor and inaction seemed driven by the unfortunate combination of an unprepared Governor and a petulant House Speaker and their many minions all focused on precisely the wrong things. In the end, they seemed most eager to let each other off the hook of official duty or any moral accountability.

The bottom line is this: The GOP supermajority, together with Governor Lee who loves to speak of freedom, all failed Tennessee’s families who want a higher order of gun-safety that actually saves human lives from more gunfire. Never was there serious consideration of limiting the availability of high-capacity weapons. Nor did it seem the ruling Republican regime even wanted to, lest they run afoul of the gun-industry’s shadowy lobbyists who always insist that guns are never the issue.

And this: The legislature will meet again in January for a regular session. Covenant parents and their allies have vowed to return then, too, with much advocacy work to be done between now and then. They vowed to continue their work to get common-sense guns laws enacted here.

As this week of high frustration and deep disappointment concluded, the resolute parents put on defiant new t-shirts, with a message to all at the Capitol who saw them depart this week: “Get Used to Seeing These Faces.”

The adoption of gun-control laws that help save more human lives is an honorable cause for our society, and state government should help us have it.

For the sake of every child and parent in Tennessee, may it be so.

© 2023 Keel Hunt