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nashvillecitypaper.com

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has rated Tennessee the most business-friendly state in the nation, Ozier told the Senate Commerce Committee, but he warned the guns-in-parking-lots bill would hurt that image.

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Belmont president Bob Fisher said, “In 12 years, I know of no shots ever fired on our campus, and I want to keep it that way. … I simply cannot logically connect how it could be any safer with untrained students or untrained employees having easy access to firearms on our private property.”

A companion bill, which purports to stamp out discrimination against gun owners, bars businesses from forcing workers to tell whether they own or use firearms. It also bans employers from basing hiring, firing or benefits on gun ownership or use, putting gun owners on the same level in state law as protected classes of people such as the disabled.

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Majority Leader Gerald McCormick has proposed a compromise in which workers could bring firearms into store parking lots and other public lots but not fenced employee-only lots. It covers only workers with state-issued handgun carry permits.

But the NRA and Tennessee Firearms Association have denounced that bill and threatened political reprisals against moderate Republicans in the House, including McCormick, Speaker Beth Harwell and GOP Caucus chair Debra Maggart. The Firearms Association has branded them the “axis of evil” and claimed they are “dancing like puppets in the financial purse strings of Big Business.”