Live from Music Row, Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – guest host Gulbransen welcomed State Representative Rusty Grills (R-Newbern) to the newsmaker line to discuss the advancement of his electronic stalking bill and updates to his firearm legislation.
Gulbransen: I want to go to our newsmaker line with State Representative Rusty Grills. How are you this morning, sir?
Grills: Good morning. Good morning. How are you?
Gulbransen: I’m doing wonderful. You and I know each other pretty well. We’re working on a couple of things together and it’s been a heck of a lot of fun. You’re a great conservative. I appreciate you.
Grills: I appreciate that and I appreciate all the things that you have worked on too. It’s nice to have people that have like minds, the same worldview, and the same objectives in life.
Gulbransen: Yes, sir. That, that’s how you get things done. Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this because I know this is important to you. Apparently, on April 5th there will be AG Day at the General Assembly. Can you elaborate on that?
Grills: That is correct. That will be Tennessee’s AG Day and we’ll have a contest out there. The Senate and the House will be working against the administration and the governor’s office. It’s all for picks and giggles. But it will be a good time that day.
Gulbransen: I’ll be sure to check it out since I’m there just about every day at this point in time.
Grills: There will be something to eat there, I’m certain. No farmer wants to hang out without having something to eat.
Gulbransen: That is very, very true. You’ve got some legislation that I think is important to note. Do you wanna talk about HB regarding the electronic stalking bill and your firearms bill as well?
Grills: Man, whatever you want. There’s nothing off-limits. I’m good for anything you wanna talk about. But let’s start with that stalking bill. The stalking bill is what I call it. Electronic stalking. There’s just been a huge influx of electronic tracking devices being used now and what we’re doing with that bill is we’re creating another course of conduct for the stalking code.
In order to be charged with stalking, you have to be caught two times, as the perpetrator does. Now stalking, we feel that that’s a little bit too much and we didn’t really have anything that would actually if you put something on someone, on someone’s person, purse, car, or coat pocket and you started following them then we just felt like that needed some more protection.
Actually, what happened back home was I had a young lady that came to me one day in Chick-fil-A and told me that something just horrific happened and was terrifying her. She lived in Lake County and she had gotten up one day and gone to work and something kept trying to connect to her car one day. But she met her boyfriend.
Anyhow, his friends actually found that someone had stuck an air tag to her car and she felt like the activities that they had towards her were not necessarily with the best of intentions. Let’s just put it that way. That’s where the bill actually came from. We actually worked on it last year, but we did not get it funded. And obviously, there are hundreds and hundreds of different ideas that need to be signed.
But that is one of them that did not get funded. We picked it up again this year and we’re gonna run with it again. I feel like we’re in pretty good shape to get it funded this year, Lord permitting.
Carmichael: Are you saying that in the absence of this bill being passed, what this guy was doing to this girl was legal?
Grills: He had to be caught twice doing it.
Carmichael: So now it’s only if you’re caught once.
Grills: We didn’t feel like there was any clarity in the code with regard to electronic stalking. So if you put a tracking device on someone, you had to, had to do it twice in order to recharge with stalking.
Carmichael: Wow.
Grills: One time’s enough in my opinion. Especially with something like this. Just because you show up in the same place doesn’t necessarily mean you’re stalking. But if you put something in someone’s purse or car, that is definitely different and not by accident. You don’t put something in someone’s purse by accident.
Carmichael: No.
Grills: You don’t put something on someone’s car by accident. You don’t put something in someone’s pocket by accident. So that was the difference in it. Mr. Crom, good to talk to you.
Carmichael: Good to talk to you. What are some of the other pieces of legislation you’re working on? Myself and Representative Chris Todd from Madison County and also another couple of representatives like Clay Doggett, we’ve been working on some firearm legislation.
Last year we had a big Supreme Court case called Bruen come through, and it reestablished what the Constitution protected for each American.
We feel like Tennessee’s laws, not just we, but it just so happens that our attorney general has actually agreed on a couple of things like 18-21 years old, Tennessee’s law says you have to be 21 and older to have a handgun and or a firearm.
They have agreed in court that that is unconstitutional. And I believe Bruen actually helped with that. Our attorney general has kind of settled that case if you will. We’ve established that and this bill that I, Chris Todd, and the other guys have been working on, what this bill does is it removes 21 down to 18. Because if you can vote, if you can join the military, you can die for the country, then you ought to be able to enjoy all the other freedoms that the Constitution protects.
Carmichael: Let me ask you another question. Are there any bills that are in the hopper to improve competition, create more competition, and maybe help charter schools or increase vouchers for kids that aren’t getting a good education?
Grills: There have been lots of conversations about that. There have been lots of conversations about that. But I am not in the education field. The committees that I work on are civil justice, transportation, and agriculture. Those are the three areas that I spend the most time in.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Rusty Grills” by Tennessee General Assembly.
Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee attorney John Harris in studio to explain how the Bruen decision applies to the state of Tennessee’s gun laws.
Leahy: We welcome back to our microphones in studio our very good friend John Harris. John is a graduate of Vanderbilt Law School. And also you have your own practice. But in addition to that, you have been for what, 30 years?
Harris: 28 years now.
Leahy: 28 years. I’m off by two. For 28 years you’ve been the founder and CEO of the Tennessee Firearms Association, protecting the Second Amendment rights of Tennesseeans. We were talking about this decision called Bruen. A recent Supreme Court decision. Lay out the facts of that case and what the Supreme Court ruled, who the plaintiffs and who the defendants were, and then let’s talk about its applicability here in Tennessee.
Harris: The US. Supreme Court in the last 14 years has been on a Second Amendment kind of theme with a couple of cases, three in particular. In 2008, they started with the Heller decision, which held that it’s an individual right to own firearms.
Leahy: And the Heller decision was a guy by the last name of Heller.
Harris: Dick Heller.
Leahy: Who lived in Washington, D.C. of all places. And the city basically said you can’t own a firearm.
Harris: Correct.
Leahy: And he said, oh, yes, I can.
Harris: And the Supreme Court agreed with him. It was a great opinion by Scalia. And then, two years later, in a case called McDonald versus the City of Chicago, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with the question of does the Second Amendment apply to the states, which was clear from the way it was written and from then basically 200 years of case law that it did not. But what the Supreme Court did in McDonald was they took the 14th amendment. And if you recall, I wrote the chapter on that in the constitution book.
Leahy: Indeed you did. You wrote a couple of chapters for us in the Guide to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for Secondary School Students, which is the basis of our National Constitution Bee, where we give out scholarships to kids, and $10,000 to the winner.
We’ve had some great winners. You wrote two chapters in that book and the one on the Second Amendment. This is the briefest, most precise amendment in the entire Constitution.
It was adopted on December 15, 1791, I think, when the Bill of Rights was adopted. It says simply, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Pretty simple.
Harris: Pretty straightforward. It’s been misconstrued a lot by progressives and even what some might refer to as RINOS in the last couple of decades. (Chuckles)
Leahy: And it’s interesting if you look at the language, the clause at the beginning of it, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the state of a free security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
If you just look at that from a logical perspective, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, in part because of a well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state. That’s one way you could interpret it. Let’s talk about the Bruen decision. Who are the plaintiffs?
Harris: Bruen, following off of the McDonald decision, was a case that came to the Supreme Court in 2021 and was decided in June of 2022.
Leahy: Less than a year ago.
Harris: Less than a year ago. Written by Justice Thomas in the majority opinion.
Leahy: And by the way, I love it when I hear written by Justice Thomas in the majority opinion or written by Justice Scalia. You know it’s going to be a good decision.
Harris: It’s a great decision. The named lead plaintiffs were the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. And Bruen is a public official. It’s just a proper defendant in this kind of case. And Bruen is essentially the state of New York.
And so the issue was that in New York they had what’s called a may issue permitting system, which left the burden on the individual to demonstrate good cause, substantial need, unique need, in order to justify being issued a permit to carry a handgun. And all of the discretion on whether or not that need had been met was vested in a local government official with really no criteria as to what the standard was.
Leahy: Let’s remember, the Second Amendment says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Harris: And New York doesn’t get it. Most states don’t get it. Tennessee doesn’t get it. So the issue was this permitting system that New York was using was constitutional. And in the Bruen decision, the main thing the court really did, and this is a little bit in the weeds, is the Court rejected the last 14 years’ worth of intermediate appellate court decisions which had adopted this two-pronged balancing test that said, yeah, the Second Amendment is there.
But if the state can give us a good reason why they need to regulate permits or where you can carry gun-free zones, then we’re going to allow the regulation, based on the reasonable need of the government to police powers. And the court said, no, that doesn’t apply anymore in Bruen. That’s the big change in Bruen.
Bruen says the Second Amendment is an absolute right. It’s a pre-existing right. It doesn’t derive itself from the Constitution. And in order to interpret a constitutionally protected right, this applies to the First and the Second Amendments.
The courts shall look at what the law was in 1791 when it was adopted. And if the regulation existed then, then that regulation or an analog or something similar to it could exist now.
And if it didn’t, then it’s unconstitutional. And so the Supreme Court struck down the New York licensing scheme at that time. And then, based on Bruen, there have been almost 400 cases since last June decided by lower courts based on the Bruen decision already.
Leahy: Now, let’s get to Tennessee. How does Bruen apply to Tennessee?
Harris: Some people think because Bruen is a federal decision that it really doesn’t apply in Tennessee. It has no relevance to, for example, Tennessee statutes or regulations or even the decision of Bill Lee to post the Capitol as a gun-free zone. And that’s just completely short-sighted, if not misleading, for that assertion to be made because McDonald 2010 said the Second Amendment regulates the states fully under the 14th Amendment. Bruen says the same thing.
And then we’ve got a Tennessee appellate court decision coming out of Maury County, where the court applied Bruen and struck down a local government housing regulation on public housing that said tenants can’t possess firearms. And then more recently, in January of 2023, the attorney general for the state of Tennessee submitted an agreed order in a federal case over in east Tennessee called Beeler, where the attorney general, in a disagreed order, agreed that Bruen applies to Tennessee.
And that the regular violation by the state of Tennessee that restricts 18 to 20-year-olds from getting permits, violates the Second Amendment, violates the 14th amendment, and constitutes a federal civil rights violation.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
