Naifeh shoots down latest gun permit bill

House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh pulled out the big guns Wednesday, using the powers of his post to shoot down a bill making the records of handgun carry permit-holders confidential.

After a House panel Wednesday had unexpectedly approved sealing from public inspection permit-holders’ information, Naifeh took action. He effectively appointed a new member of the House — just sworn in Wednesday — to the panel that had just approved the bill.

Once appointed, Naifeh and the new representative, Rep. Karen Camper (D-Memphis), voted to reconsider the panel’s previous approval of the bill, and then Naifeh and Camper gave the opposition enough votes to kill the measure.

As a result of the new member and Naifeh’s vote, the bill was defeated on a 5-4 vote.

For her part, Camper denied that Naifeh directed her how to vote.

“If she’s going to be paid today, she needs to be working,” Naifeh quipped of Camper.

Naifeh is not a member of the panel, but House rules allow the speaker to vote in any committee or subcommittee. Camper was just appointed to the Legislature by the Shelby County Commission to replace Rep. Gary Rowe, who died of cancer earlier this year.

Camper had requested to be on the House Judiciary Committee. The panel that killed the bill, the Criminal Practice Subcommittee, was a subcommittee of Judiciary that she was placed within.

“When she said Judiciary, I knew that criminal practice was meeting and I took her to the chairman and the committee,” Naifeh said.

Naifeh estimated that he appointed Camper to the Judiciary Committee roughly one hour after she was sworn in, but he could not remember exactly.

The whole sequence of events began after two Nashville Democrats on the Criminal Practice Subcommittee, Reps. Rob Briley and Janis Sontany, left the committee hearing to attend to other bills. Both Briley and Sontany are against making handgun carry permit-holders’ records confidential.

Perhaps seizing upon that, the bill was called up out of order while Briley and Sontany were out of the room and subsequently approved.

Then, Naifeh appointed Camper to the Judiciary Committee and, with he, Camper, Briley and Sontany in the room, voted personally to reconsider the previous approval and then kill the bill.

Rep. Henry Fincher (D-Cookeville), who voted for the bill and chaired the committee in Sontany’s absence, said the proposal’s original approval was not railroaded through.

“It was voted on,” Fincher said. “I voted my conscience as it may and reasonable minds can disagree on a reasonable proposal.”

On Naifeh’s action, Fincher said the “speaker is the speaker.”

“He’s got the right to vote on every committee,” Fincher said. “I respect him. We disagree on this issue.”

Naifeh’s opposition to the bill making handgun carry permit-holders’ records confidential came after he went through a training course Saturday to get his own permit. He still has steps to take to receive it.

Frank Gibson, the executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said handgun carry permit-holders’ records should be open because they have been used to show that permits were issued to convicted felons, a violation of state law.

“The only way for anyone to know the permits were being issued to people who the law says should not have them is for the records to be open,” Gibson said.

Advocates of making the records confidential say it protects the permit-holders’ privacy.