by Sam Stockard, Tennessee Outlook, March 27, 2026 - A day after killing ten bills, including a move that would let people carry guns just about anywhere, Republican Sen. Todd Gardenhire found himself in the crosshairs of the Tennessee Firearms Association. He shot back.
Gardenhire, a veteran Chattanooga lawmaker who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the firearms group hadn’t “darkened” his door for years yet continued to bash him. They also hammered nearly every other Republican in the state for opposing the end of Tennessee’s law against carrying a weapon with “intent to go armed,” a situation in which carrying the gun has no designated purpose such as hunting.
“They’re not reasonable. They’re raising money for their own pocket and paying themselves,” Gardenhire told the Lookout. “I don’t pay any attention to what they say. They have a vested interest in getting their supporters riled up to send them money. Follow the money.”
The gun group sent email letters this week slamming the state’s Republican leaders for failing to use their supermajority to “defend the Constitution” and the rights of Tennesseans to carry weapons, including long guns, along streets, near schools, in parks, pretty much everywhere.
“Instead, despite years of campaign promises and public assurances of unwavering support for the Second Amendment and the federal and state constitutions, these leaders and the Republican supermajority purposefully have left in place statutes that intentionally criminalize the very conduct and activities that the state and federal constitutions not only protect but which they also declare ‘shall not be infringed,’ by the government including its officials,” the letter says.
It points out a three-judge panel in Hughes v. Lee found the state’s “intent to go armed” and gun prohibitions in parks to be unconstitutional, void and unenforceable. Gov. Bill Lee and Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti are appealing the ruling.
The appeal and the refusal to pass bills this year repealing the law “are the actions of government tyranny choosing to violate your rights and their oaths.”
The letter goes on to blast Gardenhire for pushing off a spate of bills until 2027 without alerting committee members, none of whom objected. One of those would have ended recognition of same-sex marriages.
Tennessee Firearms Association Executive Director John Harris wraps up the letter by asking people to consider joining the organization and making charitable contributions. By the way, he also encourages people to defeat the reelection efforts of lawmakers such as Gardenhire.
If that’s the case, Gardenhire said they better be prepared to “dig a trench and get into their little foxholes.”
“I try to look at these things on a reasonable basis. I don’t like somebody being able to carry a shotgun into a bank or around a schoolhouse or in a hospital or where there’s a divorce going on somewhere and everybody’s mad at each other,” he said. “That’s just common sense, and these people don’t use common sense.”
He predicted he would serve six more years. If that’s the case, someone else will be writing his retirement story.
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Also see, The Disgruntled Republican in Nashville: Ten Bad Bills Bite the Dust in the Senate Judiciary Committee
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