In the wake of the recent mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed an executive order Tuesday aimed at strengthening the state’s background check system.
The executive order represents incremental progress in a state with some of the laxest gun laws in the country, and comes just as two lawmakers previously expelled from the state legislature for participating in a gun control protest return to their posts.
It requires that new criminal history information and court mental health information be reported within 72 hours for purposes of including it in the state’s background check system. It also directs the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to evaluate how its background check system can be improved.
But it still leaves gaping holes in a background check system. It also wouldn’t have stopped the Nashville shooter, who bought their guns legally from five different local gun stores and had no history of contact with law enforcement or commitment to an institution that would have been flagged on a background check.
The governor has separately called for the state legislature to pass a red flag law, also known as an extreme risk protection law, under which individuals believed to pose a danger to themselves or others can be barred from possessing firearms. But it’s not clear that there is the political will to do so among Republicans in the state, who have in recent years removed permit requirements to carry a handgun in public and pushed legislation that would loosen restrictions on carrying guns on school campuses.
On its own, Lee’s executive order does “very little to change the status quo,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. But the fact that Lee took any action at all on background checks — which are broadly popular and proven to reduce gun violence when well implemented — is a striking victory for gun…
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