Rep. Judd Matheny
I extend my sincerest condolences to the families of our servicemen whose lives were taken in a horrific act of planned terrorism. Having served both in the military and as a law enforcement officer in Tennessee, I have a deep and abiding gratitude and respect for anyone who chooses to serve in uniform.
Acts of terrorism are intended to make us feel powerless to respond. Tennessee has again witnessed the reality that our state is not immune from these acts of cowardice.
We first learned this lesson in 2009 when Carlos Bledsoe, a Tennessee State University student from Memphis, shot and killed Pvt. Andrew Long at the Little Rock, Arkansas Army recruiting center. With further investigation, we learned that between his days as a student and the day he became a murderer, Carlos began attending meetings at the Nashville Islamic Center, changed his name to Abdulhakim Mohammed, and spent several months in Yemen, a known terrorist training location.
It is now clear that Carlos Bledsoe’s murderous actions were not a random act or as often excused, that of a “lone wolf.” In response to those findings and to possibly stop future Carlos Bledsoes, Senator Bill Ketron and I led the General Assembly in passing a law in 2011, enhancing the criminal punishment for acts of terrorism, including jihadi terrorism, by both the perpetrators and the supporters of the violence.
Earlier this year, we realized that more needed to be done. We passed another law, known familiarly as “Andy’s Law”, named for Pvt. Andrew Long, the soldier Carlos Bledsoe murdered. This new law addresses the very situation we are now facing in Chattanooga. While the jihadist responsible for the murders is dead and cannot be prosecuted, under this new law, all individuals and all organizations who recruited, assisted, incited, or in any way supported Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez in his jihad, are subject to vastly more severe civil penalties on the state level.
Now is the time to put “Andy’s Law” into action to prosecute the planned and calculated violence in Chattanooga.
Jihadi terrorism is neither a random act nor a result of “lone wolf” perpetrators. We must use every option that we now have and those that we will devise in the future to protect ourselves from the simmering violence that is brewing in Tennessee’s communities.
Most of our state’s top leadership have skirted around the issues of security from terrorism in Tennessee. We can no longer ignore the security implications hidden in legal immigration issues, federal threats to free speech, refugee resettlement issues, indirect support of the Obama administration’s blind eye to burgeoning illegal immigrant traffic, and attempts to pass state laws equalizing rights and state benefits for illegal inhabitants in Tennessee to those of legal inhabitants.
Rep. Judd Matheny