April 14, 2008

Hitting the Target

The NRA fires back at House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh.

House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's recent actions on self-defense votes in the Tennessee General Assembly were hypocritical and ignored the will of tens of thousands of law-abiding Tennesseans. Here's why. Speaker Naifeh enjoys round-the-clock security detail courtesy of Tennessee taxpayers - even in restaurants and bars. But yet he believes that "regular people" neither deserve, nor need, the God-given right to self-defense in restaurants.

Update: Glenn Reynolds comment, "I'm kind of surprised the Democrats in the legislature wanted to pick this fight in an election year. If Al Gore had carried Tennessee in 2000, he'd have been President, and gun issues were one of the main reasons he didn't."

To be fair, not all Democrats in the Tennessee legislature agree with Naifeh's anti-self defense stance - but because they vote for Naifeh for Speaker at the start of each General Assembly, effectively they do. The only way to get rid of Naifeh's anti-self defense efforts in the legislature are to remove him from the Speaker's chair, and that will only happen by electing a Republican majority. The good news: Tennesseans can do that this fall by increasing the number of Republicans in the 99-member House by just four votes.