Naifeh To Go Heeled In Legislature If Permit Holder Ban Is Lifted

By Kleinheider Posted on May 12, 2009 at 6:59 am

Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey and Speaker Kent Williams have the authority to allow lawful handgun permit holders to bring guns into Legislative Plaza. If they do lift the ban, Speaker Emeritus Naifeh will be strapped as well, just in case tax protesters start getting any ideas:

“According to the NRA, handgun permit holders are more responsible with their firearms than off-duty police officers,” [Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey] said. “I believe that.”

If the ban on guns in the Legislative Plaza is lifted, he said, 220,000 trained and responsible permit holders would have the right to bring their guns in, but 6 million other Tennesseans would still be banned.

The two speakers would have to agree to overturn the ban imposed by Naifeh and Wilder. Naifeh said he hopes it will remain in place.

“I’d hate to think of people having guns up here in ‘02,” he said, referring to mass protests when the Legislature considered a state income tax in 2002.

“If they do (allow guns), I guess I’ll have to pack mine,” said Naifeh, one of 34 state legislators who are listed as holding handgun carry permits.

SEE ALSO: Andy Sher

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Tags: carry permit, guns in the capitol, Handgun permits, Jimmy Naifeh, Kent Williams, Legislative Plaza, Ron Ramsey, strapped in the Capitol, Tennessee State Capitol building  

Open The Records, But Limit The Access To Gatekeepers

By Kleinheider Posted on March 21, 2009 at 3:56 pm

Phil Williams struggles to find a compromise on handgun permit open records:

Of course, there are some gun-rights advocates who think no one should have access to any of that information — no how, no way — and, for them, there’s no sense even talking about compromise.

But others, like Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, have expressed an interest in finding middle ground — which is where I find myself, professionally and personally.

For years, NewsChannel 5 has obtained a database of every gun-permit holder in the state of Tennessee. But, unlike other news organizations, we never considered posting the raw data on the Internet so that people could look up their neighbors. Weighing the potential benefit versus the potential invasion of privacy, we came down on the side of privacy.

What we did, however, was to responsibly use the data to expose how state government was failing in its responsibility to protect the public.

Using that database, we matched the full names and dates of birth of the permit holders against the full names and dates of birth of convicted felons from another state database.

UPDATE: Williams takes issue with this blog posting in the comments:

Headline is extremely misleading. I never said “limit access to gatekeepers.” I just laid out what I, as a journalist, need to be able to perform the same watchdog function as I do today.

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Tags: Handgun permits, open records, Phil Williams, Ron Ramsey