Article from Reason by Noah Shepardson.
Convicted felons can now possess guns in the Volunteer State.
The catch? The guns have to be so old they don’t technically count as firearms under state law. That also means they’d probably be pretty useless in terms of self-defense.
Earlier this year, the state legislature unanimously passed legislation that amended Tennessee’s definition as to what constitutes a firearm in order to make the state’s definition the same as the federal government’s. Notably, the federal government doesn’t consider “antique weapons”—by which the government means guns manufactured prior to 1899—to be firearms. That means, by extension, Tennessee now doesn’t either.
State law previously denied felons—including individuals convicted of nonviolent drug offenses—the right to own any firearms, including those classified as antique. However, Tennessee’s reaffirmation of a felon’s right to own an outdated, ineffective weapon does little to address the fact that nonviolent drug offenders are still being denied their Constitutional right to self-defense in the state.
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit: By KAZ Vorpal (Flickr: Declaration of Independence, with Firearm) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
wpDiscuz
I believe that the federal definition of a “firearm” excludes weapons manufactured prior to 1899 AND replicas thereof. This means that a black powder cap-and-ball pistol such as used in the Civil War is not a “firearm”. I believe that you can order such a pistol on line and it will be delivered in the mail or via a shipping company. You can carry such a pistol and not violate any of the stupid “concealed carry” laws. Of course, that is here in Texas. In the communist states of CA, NJ, NY, IL, and others, they probably have additional laws that make possessing a spit-wad a crime.
It used to be that people who committed felonies forfeited some of the privileges of citizenship. That was part of the consequences for such criminal behavior. One of the privileges lost was the franchise– the right to vote. Another was the right to own and bear firearms. The loss of these privileges was meant to be lifelong, and could only be rescinded if the felon were pardoned, or if his or her conviction was overturned. Thus these potential losses served as a strong deterrent to committing said crimes, Nowadays, though, Liberal/Progressive legislatures are misguidedly dismantling these established rules, first by giving felons the vote, and now, allowing them to own firearms– which is rather like giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor cabinet. Such measures might be motivated by good intentions, but are at best counterproductive (as any elimination of due consequences for criminal or antisocial actions is bound to be) and at worst could very well be seriously deleterious to the public. (I mean– guns for felons? What dazzling genius came up with THAT chestnut?)