Former state House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick predicts that fruit will prove evasive in the special legislative session called by Governor Bill Lee to pass public safety laws related to gun violence.
“It sounds like it’s going to have tough going,” Mr. McCormick told the Pachyderm Club at its Monday meeting.
Governor Lee is pushing an order of protection law that would temporarily seize guns from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others, which may include mental health patients. Mr. McCormick said that before the Republican-led legislature will support the law, gun owners will need protections from inconsistencies or fraud.
Mr. McCormick also speculated that a request under the Freedom of Information Act could require the FBI to release the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto, including her journals and other writings.
“It ought to be a public document at some point,” he said. “Very little has been said about this person who did this horrible thing.”
Mr. McCormick said that the General Assembly’s ejection of two of the Tennessee Three who disrupted legislative proceedings with protests supporting gun control may have been an overreaction, because the Three have used it as a platform, he said.
“They were literally fundraising the next day,” he said. “I do blame the politicians who raise money off (the victims’) deaths,” Mr. McCormick said.
Mr. McCormick praised Tennessee’s record of achieving a balanced budget and qualifying for an excellent bond rating, which he said has recently been better than the federal government’s.
He said this fiscal responsibility has given the state a surplus that will fund the recent school safety bill designating $120 million for school resource officers in public schools and $7 million for security upgrades in private schools, plus other major funding for education.
“They’ve done some things to get us ready for the future,” he said. He called the Chattanooga-area delegation the most influential in the state.
“With that delegation we are able to get things done,” he said.
Mr. McCormick served in the state legislature from 2004 until 2018. He was the House Majority Leader for six years under Governor Bill Haslam and served for two years as the Budget Subcommittee chairman.
He joined the Ingram Group as a lobbyist in 2018 and said his mother “thinks I play the piano in the house of ill repute.” He is a general consultant for businesses at the state level, a job that requires him to live in Nashville.
“For the record, I would rather be in Chattanooga,” he said. “Chattanooga’s been so good to me. I miss it.”