Legislative committee calendars for the week of February 13, 2023, indicate that 7 different committees are scheduled to hear bills that being tracked by TFA.

Attached to this email is a calendar report of the bills, the dates and times when they are scheduled to be heard and TFA's preliminary comments.  It is important to note that the legislature allows members to add amendments to bills, frequently that entirely rewrite the bill, prior to or even during the committee hearing.  This is how some of the worst bills "get moving" because it is very hard to monitor these amendments in time to share them with those who receive this email. 

A new feature of this report is that we were able to get the vendor to include "clickable" email addresses for committee members.  There is even a clickable "email all" so that you can in one click email all committee members.  We asked for it and we hope you use it frequently to "instruct" your elected officials.  

Do NOT let a legislator serving on a committee or subcommittee reject your email by claiming or asking if you are one of their constituents!   That be an expected response if all members of the respective house were considering the bill because it is "on the floor" but when these individual legislators serve on committees and subcommittees - often with perhaps just a handful of members, they are at that time representing all interested Tennesseans!   If a committee member tries to respond by raising the "constituent" issue, please respond by insisting that for committee hearings all Tennesseans are the relevant constituent pool - and copy that email to the appropriate speaker of the House or Senate because that committee member might need a civics lesson.

Finally, as these bills start to move forward in the Tennessee Legislature, it is important for 2nd Amendment advocates in and even those who live outside of Tennessee to let the Legislators know that they are demanding that all infringements on the rights protected by the 2nd and 14th Amendment be removed this year. To do that, it is critical to let your voice be heard and TFA has provided this advocacy tool to help in that regard. Use it to contact your legislators – particularly since you are able to edit the message to express your demands in your own words.

If you are aware of other bills that you think TFA should consider tracking, please let us know soon.