House Speaker Cameron Sexton Says Special Session Could Bring Beneficial Change

Governor Lee has issued the official call for a special legislative session starting August 21st, setting the parameters for topics of discussion.

The session includes more than 18 topics, including school safety plans and measures to encourage the safe storage of firearms. House Speaker Cameron Sexton said he believes lawmakers will make agreeable decisions to improve public safety.

“The one thing we all have to recognize is evil is evil and you’re never going to stop an evil person from doing something that’s evil,” Sexton said. “All we can do is try to put things in place that limit people, that gives people the capability of being caught on the front end. You can’t catch everybody.”

Sexton said while he does not believe you can solve the issue of an “evil person,” there are a lot of ideas being floated around for solutions to public safety concerns. He said he does not believe they would pass a red flag law in the state of Tennessee, but there are other measures to be taken.

Sexton said the lawmakers have spent the time between regular session ending in April preparing for the potential special session. He said they have been meeting with constituents and hearing comments from the public about their wants and needs.

“There’s a lot of things around mental health that we need to have fixed, we need more long-term beds than what we currently have,” Sexton said. “We also need to solve juvenile crime and maybe have blended sentences. Juveniles at the age of 19, their records are clean whether they’re committed or have committed crimes so we can work on that as well. Right now our background checks are not instantaneous because we don’t have a unified court system where everybody talks to one another. Our data goes back 12 years that are not in the system, so I think we can solve that as well.”