December 17, 2019
Tennessee Firearms Association rejects contention that citizens who exercise a fundamental right that is constitutionally protected are responsible for growing problems with juvenile and violent crime.
As citizens of this state and nation, the United States Supreme Court has declared that we all enjoy as a fundamental human right, a right which pre-exists the formation of any state or even the United States, the right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights does not create this right. No, the Second Amendment recognizes its existence and then it prohibits government action when it declares that the right "shall not be infringed."
Yet, for decades now, particularly since the Civil War, state and local officials in Tennessee have violated openly the 2nd Amendment's recognition of the right and its prohibition. These elected and appointed public officials have sought to impose all manner of infringements on the fundamental rights of citizens to have, use and rely on arms for a variety of reasons including self-defense.
Some Tennessee elected officials have worked with TFA over the last quarter-century in an effort to identify and repeal these infringements. It has been a slow process. It is slow because it is seldom supported by the governor, Legislative leaders, and the upper levels of state and local law enforcement communities. These "pro-infringers" assert that citizens have no "need" for arms. These "pro-infringers" claim that citizens must pay fees to the state and pass state approved training programs before they can be allowed to exercise the right which the constitutions declare are beyond government infringement. These "pro-infringers" listen to emotional advocacy groups who plead for outright gun control that these gun control fanatics euphemistically refer to as "reasonable" measures in the name of "public safety". These "pro-infringers" have refused for at least a quarter century to repeal clear statutes which cannot withstand approval under the standard of "shall not be infringed".
This week we see more of the same. Law enforcement and state legislators from the Memphis area are calling for a repeal of a law that allows legal gun owners to store their weapons in a personal vehicle if they are not allowed by state or local law to carry the firearm with them into a destination.
These "pro-infringment" public officials, all of whom have sworn an oath to the very constitutions which prohibit infringement, seek to blame gun owners because they are unable to control and suppress crime in the very communities where they have accepted the duty to "keep the peace". These government officials want to blame civilian gun owners for the government's failed social experiments that are the source of uncontrolled crime in other cities in the nation and that are likely the source of uncontrolled and growing violent crime in this State's major cities.
There is a clear and present danger to the fundamental human rights relative to arms that Justice Scalia wrote about in the 2008 Heller decision. That threat comes primarily from one sources - individuals who by appointment or election becomes the representatives of a government that is unwilling to abide by the constitutional prohibition set forth in the 2nd Amendment. These individuals, all of whom took an oath of constitutional stewardship, violate that oath and perhaps even engage in official oppression every time that they call for more gun control, "reasonable" restrictions, or any other government movement that impairs or infringements the fundamental, pre-existing individual rights of the citizens relative to arms.
If these risks to your rights and your freedoms concern you, please considering joining, renewing and supporting the work of the Tennessee Firearms Association.
John Harris
Executive Director
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