Governor Bill Haslam said Sunday he is issuing a directive that asks the state adjutant general to review the safety at all of the state's military facilities.
In an interview on Meet the Press on NBC, he said, "Not just our armories, but the storefront recruiting units. We have those like the one that was attacked on Thursday."
He said, in the light of the tragic shooting at Chattanooga on Thursday morning, the state will be "reviewing where it's appropriate for our officers to be armed to a better degree than they were in the past, both where that's appropriate and where it's legal."
Governor Haslam said the state is limited on what it can do on federal facilities, and he said it would be helpful if the federal government can provide additional safeguards there.
Here is the transcript of the interview:
GOV.
BILL HASLAM:
Good morning.
CHUCK TODD:
What more can you tell us about the investigation that we don't know? Any new developments on your end sir?
GOV. BILL HASLAM:
You know, the FBI has been incredible I think in terms of being willing to chase down every lead, working with state law enforcement and local folks to try to ascertain is this somebody that was just totally operating on their own, was there someone else pulling their strings, just what caused this person to get to the point where he did what he did. So I have a lot of faith that they're going to drill down exactly on what happened. Like I said, so far, I've been really impressed with their ability to go literally to every end to see where that will take them.
CHUCK TODD:
Here we are, 72 hours in, and we don't have bread crumbs that lead us to a conclusion that many people have already come to, which is that this was a terrorist attack. What's been the struggle here?
GOV. BILL HASLAM:
Well, I think one of the maybe scary things for all of us as Americans is the chance that, maybe the very good chance, this is just a lone wolf out there operating on his own, where we had no predictors of what he would do. And it makes it really hard, obviously, to think, how do we protect ourselves against that in the future?
I think that's one of the fears that all of us have is that he might be motivated by someone, someone might be pulling his strings, but when he's out there operating by himself, it's a little harder to ascertain exactly what we do about that.
CHUCK TODD:
Many of your fellow governors have decided to figure out ways to increase security at some of these recruitment centers, particularly for the National Guard, where governors have authority on that. What are you thinking about doing as far as Tennessee is concerned?
GOV. BILL HASLAM:
So we'll have a directive that comes out today that basically asks the adjutant general to review the safety at all of our facilities, not just our armories, but the storefront recruiting units. We have those like the one that was attacked on Thursday. And then number two, reviewing where it's appropriate for our officers to be armed to a better degree than they were in the past, both where that's appropriate and where it's legal.
One of the challenges we have is that many of our armories, many of our facilities are federal facilities. So we don't want to put our adjutant generals in a difficult position of giving them an order that they can't carry out because it's on a federal facility. So we're doing a complete review to see what we can. We're concerned, obviously. We don't want to leave our folks out there as targets when we've had such a horrible event happen just three days ago.
CHUCK TODD:
So you may need an act of Congress?
GOV. BILL HASLAM:
Well, ultimately that would help clear things up. Because on federal grounds, we have limited authority of what we can do. We're going to do everything we can. End of the day, it will be a lot better if we have clarity from the federal side.
CHUCK TODD:
Governor Haslam, I know it's been tough on you, tough on your state, my condolences to there and thank you for coming on this morning.
GOV. BILL HASLAM:
Well, thank you. Chattanooga's a great city with a broken heart. We have some people that have reacted well. I think all of us mourn for four Marines and a sailor who are lost and their families that are suffering today.
CHUCK TODD:
Absolutely. Governor, thanks very much.