Sen. Yarbro attempts to force vote on gun reform bill similar to Gov. Lee's

Democratic Sen. Jeff Yarbro made a Hail Mary attempt to force a Senate vote Thursday on a bill to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others — but Republicans in the chamber blocked the effort.

Yarbro’s effort followed a call by Republican Gov. Bill Lee on Wednesday for the legislature to pass a bill allowing law enforcement to confiscate firearms from individuals found by a judge to be a risk of harm to themselves or others. Lee’s risk protection order did not find support among Republican leaders, who voiced skepticism on the policy and the timing with which it was proposed.

Minutes before the upper chamber took up budget bills on Thursday morning, Yarbro, D-Nashville, leveraged a rarely used Senate rule that allows members to recall previously calendared but unconsidered bills from committee, in an effort to force a vote on risk protection order policy.

Yarbro’s Senate Bill 1029 was originally designed as a safe gun storage bill. It had been first calendared in the Senate Judiciary Committee for March 7, but was delayed repeatedly and finally to April 4, when Judiciary Committee Chairman Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, delayed consideration of all gun bills to 2024 shortly after the deadly Covenant shooting.

“There have been three mass shootings in Nashville in the last six years. In each and every one of them, the perpetrator was known to their family, law enforcement… to both pose a risk to themselves or others before the shooting took place,” Yarbro said. “I’m not saying that we know for sure that a law like the one proposed here would have absolutely prevented it, but it absolutely would have given us a chance to.”

Immediately after Yarbro made his motion to recall, Rules Committee Chair Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixon, warned that taking up Yarbro’s bill could set a precedent to recall bills from committee for direct floor consideration in the future.

“At some point in time, all of us have had pieces of legislation that we would have loved to call directly to the floor for a vote,” Watson said. “Even under (Lt.) Gov. (John) Wilder, there has never been an incident when this body recalled a piece of legislation from a standing committee.… No motion to recall has ever been successfully achieved.”

Gardenhire, who presided over the bill’s delay in judiciary, moved to table Yarbro’s motion to recall.

In response, Yarbro, who has also served on the Rules Committee, said he was wary of setting bad precedent, but noted that a committee chairman’s “oppressive” power to require bills to be “summarily punted to the next year with a whole category of other bills” could also set a dangerous trend.

“That is a precedent that we should not follow — where our committees can just choose to forego legislation on whole topics at a will,” he said. “That is an assault on what this body is about.”

His voice wavering with emotion, Yarbro asked colleagues to vote against the tabling motion.

“We are the only people in the state who can take action right now — shouldn’t we?” Yarbro asked.

Senators killed the motion to recall Yarbro’s bill in a vote of 24 to 7.

Sen. Art Swann, R-Maryville, was the lone Republican who voted against tabling. Sens. Richard Briggs, R-Knoxville, and Becky Duncan Massey, R-Knoxville, voted present.

Yarbro’s amendment differed in substantial points from Lee’s proposal made Wednesday, but was drafted based on Florida’s legislation signed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott after the Parkland shooting.

“Everyone had access to this amendment that I filed more than two weeks ago — which is longer than we’ve had the supplemental budget, by the way,” Yarbro noted.

It would have allowed both family and law enforcement to petition for a risk protection order, and allowed ex parte hearings. The amendment would have set a standard of clear and convincing evidence, granted a right to appeal, and created a criminal offense for harassment claims and orders based on false information.

“This modest proposal probably requires more due process than we’ve enacted to remove children from people’s homes,” Yarbro said. “Is that really where we are, where the gun is entitled to more rights than children?”

“We owe it to the people of Tennessee,” Yarbro said, echoing the words of the governor Wednesday.

Gun rights group threatens lawmakers

A group of parents with Voices for a Safer Tennessee, a nonpartisan gun-reform group founded by a group of moms after the Covenant shooting, have for days attended committee meetings and floor sessions, holding up signs calling for gun safety and extreme risk laws.

On Thursday, an Ohio-based firearm association also had representatives lobbying inside the Capitol, handing out a letter from American Firearms Association President Chris Dorr that it considered a vote for Lee's law an act of betrayal of “gun owners and gun voters.”

The letter warned Republican members it would aggressively “prosecute backstabbing Republicans in the court of public opinion at election time — especially primaries.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee state Sen. Yarbro attempts to force vote on gun reform