Dear Matt Murphy,
It appears as though State House Speaker Cameron Sexton is lying to you. I listened to your call with him on your podcast. I heard him telling you untruths, and you just sat there and went along with it.
This is kind of beside the point, but man, so many conservative men in this state run around claiming that the natural and right position is for y’all to be heads of the household and the public face of the family, and then you’re like this. I just can’t imagine submitting myself to someone who nods along and responds enthusiastically when he’s being lied to. Andrew Jackson had more than his fair share of evil villainy, but if you lied to him, he was liable to shoot you.
OK, let’s back up. As we all remember, Gov. Bill Lee called a special session to do something about guns in the wake of the Covenant School shooting. The somethings he wanted to do mostly had nothing to do with guns, because I guess he believes in associative magic — if we do enough things in response to our gun crisis, even if those things have nothing to do with guns, the temporal proximity of the need and the action will satiate the need whether or not the action directly affects the need. It's kind of like wanting a boyfriend, so you sit at home and eat Cheetos that, if you squint, seem to have faces on them, thinking that magically a boyfriend will appear at your door.
The short answer: nothing particularly meaningful
Gov. Lee’s magical thinking ended up not mattering, because the state House held a weeklong simmering riot while the state Senate ghosted us and no real business got done.
Last week, a Belmont University student was shot and killed because any old body who wants a gun in Tennessee can have a gun, even if everyone in their lives knows they shouldn’t have one. I guess this must be kind of embarrassing for Sexton, because people who are very easy for Republican voters to identify with — small children at a private Christian school, a lovely and kind Belmont student, etc. — keep getting shot by people who obviously should not have had guns.
So Sexton calls into your show, Matt, and tells you that at least some of the blame lies with the state Senate because they left town and didn’t pass any bills that might have been helpful. He even says, “We had a bill with General Funk about misdemeanor crimes getting a mental health evaluation.” Matt, which bill?
Is it HB7027, which according to its abstract: “As introduced, requires the state to pay the cost of a court-ordered mental health evaluation and treatment for criminal defendants who have been charged with a misdemeanor and are believed to be incompetent to stand trial or for whom there is a question about mental capacity at the time of the offense"? Because sure, that sounds like it might be a bill that would require people who’ve committed “misdemeanor crimes getting a mental health evaluation,” but if you read the actual bill, you’ll see that all it’s doing is shifting who pays for the mental health evaluations that already happen. It is currently the county or the defendant. This law would have made it the state or the defendant.
Or maybe he meant some of the bills Democrats proposed? HB7089 would have let law enforcement bring a person who was having a mental health crisis in for evaluation before arresting them. House Republicans didn’t let that one out of committee — that wasn't the Senate. HB7100 would have created a mental health order of protection as a tool to keep guns out of the hands of people in crisis. It, too, was alive in the Senate and dead in the House.
All of this is on a really convenient and easy to use website maintained by the state. Perhaps if someone calls you up and tells you some fantastical tale about a piece of legislation that would have saved the life of a young woman if only the Senate had acted on it, ask him for the bill number. Look it up. See if it says what he’s saying it says.
But don’t give these guys a platform to lie to you and your audience. Have some self-respect. You don’t have to duel him, but maybe ask for receipts?
Best,
Betsy
