Gun violence, school vouchers and reproductive rights on the slate for 113th session
The Tennessee General Assembly’s 2024 session opened with controversy as a new rule requiring citizens to obtain a special ticket to enter and watch the proceedings in the Tennessee House of Representatives came into effect with no prior notice.
This change in access — somewhat foreshadowed by last-minute rules changes in the special session in the fall — placed limitations on democratic participation on the very first day of proceedings and set the tone for what will be a conflict-ridden legislative session. Anyone who wanted to enter the gallery had to have a ticket from their representative, some of whom were only notified of the new rule the morning they arrived at their office at the capitol.
A coalition of organizations are engaged in varying degrees of policy discussion and advocacy around gun violence at the capitol: Moms Demand Action, Covenant Families for Brighter Tomorrows, and Rise & Shine Tennessee, are all advocating for sensible gun safety measures. The coalition, composed of groups of parents and community members skilled in law, media and direct communication with lawmakers, plan to strategically oppose bills that seek to loosen existing gun laws.
“In terms of policy, I think if the people keep showing up, the ability to pass the loosening gun laws will hopefully be mitigated or their ability will be lessened because they have gun laws that they would like to pass, and we’re hoping that they will not get a chance to pass those because Tennesseeans don’t want them,” says Maryam Abolfazli, founder of Rise & Shine Tennessee.
Abolfazli, who also chairs the Metro Human Relations Commission and is a mother and longtime advocate, organized protests after the Covenant shooting and found parents with strengths all over the state who were ready to jump into action. After a less than fruitful special session, there’s more of a general consensus that stopping the worst bills from pushing through is the best anyone can hope for in 2024.
The day before the session began, the state released The State of the Child 2023 report, revealing alarming statistics that indicate a 133 percent increase in violence against children using firearms over the past decade. Additionally, the report highlighted that 1 in 4 child deaths in 2021 alone were related to firearms. These sobering figures should have set the stage in their own way for discussions on gun safety legislation during the session, but Abolfazli says the data largely won’t move anyone to action, at least not on the legislative level, and certainly not in this session. A Vanderbilt University poll released in the spring of last year also showed the majority of Tennesseeans — around 75 percent — support stricter gun control measures.
“I’ve learned that Republican lawmakers, lawmakers do not care about data, it doesn’t work,’ she says. “Gun owners of the Second Amendment kind also don’t care about data. Responsible gun owners that don’t want their kids to die at school, they’re interested in the data. They’re interested in the child death data, but extreme extremists, they don’t care… we’re focusing much more on really trying to bridge our opinions, really trying to bring gun owners to see that there can’t be an arming everybody only solution. We don’t want to be armed. I don’t want to be armed. I don’t. And that’s the natural end is that everyone has to be armed everywhere for their version of safety to occur. For the non-gun owner version, no one needs a gun anywhere. So we’ve got to find some middle between that.”
Advocacy groups like Rise & Shine have still mobilized to ensure that the voices of concerned citizens are heard, but they see the roadblocks ahead of them for necessary policy changes. This convening of the session will likely bring up other hotly contested pieces of legislation around school vouchers and reproductive rights.
Abolfazli said in addition to supporting the groups working alongside other advocates on those issues, Rise & Shine is working on centering gun violence discussions around the people they affect most this session — opening the first week with a presser with elementary school children and another with teenagers — with an eye toward how legislation has left some out in the past. In addition to bringing children, who have experiences with living in a world with mass shootings, to the discussion, she stressed the need for inclusive policies that consider the experiences of people of color, those in poverty and marginalized communities.
“A lot of times policies have passed in the gun safety world that are not thinking about children of color or people of color,” Abolfazli says. “So making sure we have these filters on it: How would a person going through poverty experiences? How would a person who’s unhoused experience this? How would a person who is a person of color experience it? How would an immigrant experience this? How [would] a child versus an adult experience this? So really putting the filters on it.”
In terms of a forward-moving policy change, Abolfazli feels confident in one change that could make a difference: If both sides could rally around secure storage of firearms in the car and home, it would at least cut down on the number of children who die accidentally from unsecured firearms left as well as suicides.
“That would really help with suicides and deaths of children in the car,” she says. “Because so many firearms are stolen to perpetrate crimes and things. And then in the home, because that’s where the kids kill each other and kill themselves accidentally. So I would love that. I don’t think in the home it’s even on the table and the car might be on the table and otherwise, I hate to say this, but I think if we can just prevent the further loosening of the laws, we would be OK. They want to [be able to] bring [guns] into the parks. They want to have teachers have enhanced gun permits. Anyone with an enhanced gun permit to have it on campus. They want kids to be able to have it on college campuses. I think preventing all that could be, very sadly, that could be just as helpful.”