Lawmakers are headed back to the statehouse in Nashville for a special session this week, but unlike last year Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee isn't asking them to take up any gun-related bills. 

In 2024, after the shootings at Covenant School in Nashville, Lee initially sought legislative approval of a "red flag"-style gun confiscation bill, but that idea was swiftly rejected by the Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Now, about a week after a student at Antioch High School shot and killed a classmate before taking his own life, gun control advocates are clamoring for a "red flag" bill and other anti-gun legislation, but Lee's office says the focus of the special session is the governor's Education Freedom Act, which includes a number of new initiatives:

• 20,000 scholarships for Tennessee students starting in the 2025-2026 school year
• Scholarship amounts equal to the per pupil base funds allocated to public school students each year
• 5,000 additional scholarships with universal eligibility added each year after 75% of total scholarships are taken in the prior year
• Making sure state funding to school districts will not decrease due to disenrollment
• 350+ private schools eligible to voluntarily receive Education Freedom Scholarships as Category I-III schools
• $2,000 bonus for every teacher in the state
• 80% of all sports wagering dollars dedicated to building and maintaining K-12 public school facilities

In a statement, Lee's press secretary said that action had already been taken to invest "hundreds of millions of dollars into school safety measures through bipartisan legislation, which includes funding an armed School Resource Officer (SRO) for every public school, enhanced public and private school security upgrades, and placing school-based behavioral health liaisons across the state." 

Additionally, every school district is required to establish threat assessment teams to ensure students are connected to support services and behavioral health professionals when appropriate and develop annual safety plans.”

Now, its an open question as to whether or not the Antioch school system deployed its threat assessment team to assess the behavior of the 17-year-old who opened fire in the high school cafeteria. We do know that he'd previously been suspended from school for a whopping two days after threatening a student with a box cutter several months ago. We also know that the school's weapons detection system, known as Omnialert, failed to recognize the gun in the student's hand, which meant that its automatic call to 911 and alert to school officials never happened. 

Still, addressing those failures should primarily be the responsibility of the school district, not the state legislature.  There are also reports that several firearms were previously removed from the student's home, but it's unclear whether any formal charges were filed in connection with their seizure. Again, that's more an issue for local law enforcement instead of lawmakers, but we can expect the gun control lobby to try to make an issue out of Lee's refusal to demand anti-2A legislation during the special session. 

Of course, if voters really wanted the legislature to embrace Everytown or Moms Demand Action's agenda, they would have voted for Democrats last November. Instead, Republicans maintained their supermajority in both the House and Senate; a clear sign that, no matter how concerned Tennesseans might be about public safety, they don't see restricting our Second Amendment rights as the answer.