August 1, 2024, is voting day in Tennessee.  We need for Tennessee's Second Amendment supporters and advocates to make sure that they vote and to make sure they vote for the right candidates.

There have been recent reports that Donald Trump has commented that gun owners don't vote or don't vote much.  There may be some truth to that.   

The issue is not whether voters who have guns in the household vote Democrat or Republican. Indeed research has pretty consistently shown that, for example, gun ownership and party support were significant in the midterm elections in the United States on November 6, 2018. According to the exit polls, about 36 percent of voters who had a gun in their household voted for Democratic candidates, compared to 61 percent of gun owners who voted for Republican candidates.

But voting Democrat or Republican in the Tennessee August primaries is not the issue.  The issue in the August primaries is voting for "conservative 2nd Amendment steward" versus votes for candidates that may even claim to be a 2nd Amendment supporter but whose history (including their voting records if incumbents) proves that they do not truly understand the Second Amendment or the scope of the rights that the Second Amendment protects. 

Indeed, if many of the August primary candidates who are incumbents who claim to be Second Amendment supporters actually were strong on the Second Amendment, then there is no reason why with a Republican super majority for the last 14 years that Tennessee -

 - does not have REAL constitutional carry

 - has so many "gun free" zones

 - has failed to repeal laws and regulations that violate the Supreme Court's Bruen holding

 - continues to increase the circumstances that created "prohibited" persons rather than expanding restoration of rights proceedings

 - has problems getting gun ranges zoned or expanded

 - has almost no public gun ranges in public parks and recreational areas

 - has a Governor and numerous legislators that think "Red Flag laws" are a good idea

and

- why the Republican controlled Legislature FAILED to move forward a resolution that would have allowed Tennesseans the opportunity to vote in 2026 on amending the state constitution's "2nd Amendment" provision to mirror the Second Amendment by stripping off a "Jim Crow" clause that was added immediately after the Civil War.

Tennessee needs the voters, particularly those who are gun owners and that truly understand the purpose of the Second Amendment to vote in the August primary. 

Tennessee needs voters to remove the incumbents in the primaries (or the unqualified challengers) who have been blocking and stonewalling the effort to make Tennessee's laws - at a minimum - compliant with the mandate of the Second Amendment.  

Tennessee should be the best state in the nation for gun owners.   Right now, after 14 years of the Republican controlled Legislature with the leadership that has existed during that time, it is not.  Voters can and must turn out on August 1 2024 to change that.