Criminals get to carry long guns! Evidenced by the videos shot of Austin Drummond sneaking around Jackson this week, through people’s back yards, church parking lots, through their playgrounds…instilling terror for children who watch the news and whose parents have to leave them to go to work.
Helicopters circling, swat teams in full warfighter regalia shutting down streets, it made Jackson and the Pipkin Lane area look like occupied territory, not conducive to a good night’s sleep in one’s own home, with instruction from authorities to keep vehicles and doors to homes and sheds locked, and everybody’s head on a swivel.
The numerous officers of the law, (thank goodness they were put up in numbers responding to the crisis) all seemed to have one thing in common, they were carrying rifles. Makes sense, the perp had one (rather an AR pistol with a drum magazine, standard tools of the trade for drug lords AND lawful to carry in Tennessee for non-criminals) so it makes sense that our protectors would be so armed as well, we the taxpayer supply them for instances such as this.
Criminals can carry such weapons, it is against the law of course but then criminals do not respect laws. Drummond was notorious for breaking the rules, his cell in prison was better outfitted for fun than most teenagers with parents who pay attention (how that was accomplished is a question that should be thoroughly investigated) but we have pictorial proof of that as well.
Had I decided to arm myself as well as the cops and robbers to stand watch at my granddaughters home in that neighborhood (it was all very personal to me, not far off and in some other area) I would have been a criminal too. In the “Patron State of Shooting Stuff” our General Assembly had mandated that the citizenry must be disallowed the use of the most owned firearm in the US as a defensive tool.
In the landmark Second Amendment case, Heller from 2008, the Court made this statement about Tennessee:
“In Andrews v. State, the Tennessee Supreme Court likewise held that a statute that forbade openly carrying a pistol “publicly or privately, without regard to time or place, or circumstances,” 50 Tenn., at 187 (1871), violated the state constitutional provision (which the court equated with the Second Amendment). That was so even though the statute did not restrict the carrying of long guns.” – District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 629 (2008)
Double whammy there folks, a Tennessee State Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of the United States saying the same thing, it is your RIGHT to bear long arms. Yet our state government violates the orders of our constitutions by denying that natural right to the people that work and pay the taxes that purchase them for Law Enforcement while not being able to keep criminals from carrying these arms to use against us, or being able to possess them to defend ourselves.
Of note, everyone on the stage at the press conference of responders after the eventual capture (be aware, they are not preventors) with the exception of the Federal Marshal’s Service has been involved with lobbying against the efforts of constitutionally compliant legislator sin getting this travesty and theft of rights reversed; the TBI, Chiefs of Police, Sheriff’s Association (I know a number of Sheriffs who do not agree with the Association’s stance on this) and District Attorney General’s Conference all lobbied the Senate Judiciary Committee this last year to deny the citizen that right
Elizabeth Stroecker, Legislative Director and General Council for the Department of Safety stated in the video that handguns are adequate for self-defense, if so why did every Law Enforcement Officer have a rifle. She is not a legislator, and it is not her position to influence legislation that could restore the stolen civil rights of the People to carry adequate arms.
She represents responders that show up after a situation has occurred and the People are on their own, strapped by the insistence of these unelected bureaucrats who deny constitutional, natural rights.. Her associates carry chalk to draw outlines around bodies and crime scene tape to try to prevent others from walking in spilt blood.
“In Heller and McDonald, we held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.” New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, No. 20-843, 14 (U.S. Jun. 23, 2022)
It is there for any to see who will, no mention of handguns only, it says arms. Those smart jurist on the highest bench in America would have said that if it was what they meant.
