Require background checks on every firearm sale, require safe storage when kids are in the home, and create a court-ordered process for temporarily removing firearms from someone in crisis.
Tennessee has a proud tradition of gun ownership, and nothing in this plan changes that. These proposals keep guns out of dangerous hands.
Universal background checks on all firearm sales, including private sales. Safe storage requirements when kids are in the home. And Extreme Risk Protection Orders, a court-reviewed process that temporarily removes firearms from someone in crisis. Tennessee loses more people to gun suicide than gun homicide. Indiana's red flag law reduced gun suicides by 7.5%. Connecticut's reduced them by 13.7%.
Responsible gun owners already practice these measures. A judge reviews evidence, the gun owner gets a hearing and legal representation with the same due process we require before any other temporary restraining order.
Put trauma-informed training, peer support, and wellness services in every Tennessee police department, so officers don't break under the weight of the worst calls.
Officers experience PTSD and depression at roughly five times the rate of the general population. In recent years, more officers have died by suicide than in the line of duty. Nearly a quarter report suicidal ideation over their careers, yet fewer than one in five with mental health conditions seek treatment.
Trauma-informed training equips officers to manage their own occupational trauma and respond thoughtfully to trauma in the communities they serve. Nashville's Behavioral Health Services division is already doing this work. We'll put it in every department, at every rank, with peer support programs and confidential wellness services that officers can access without stigma.
Help forty thousand more Tennessee veterans claim the federal benefits they've earned, through better claim filing in every county, veteran-to-veteran peer support, rural digital screening, and on-site employment help at Tennessee's VA medical centers.
Tennessee has roughly 397,600 veterans. The state doesn't track whether its 95 county veteran service officers are filing claims, whether those claims get approved, or how much federal money they're securing. Meanwhile, the veteran suicide rate is 39.9 per 100,000, roughly three veterans per week.
We'll build statewide outcome tracking for every county service officer and deploy digital screening tools so rural veterans don't drive hours for a form. A veteran-to-veteran peer support network, modeled on New York's Joseph P. Dwyer Project, will start in 30 high-need rural counties. Employment specialists embedded in Tennessee's VA medical centers will use Individual Placement and Support, where a randomized trial found 68.6% of veterans with PTSD obtained competitive employment. Our target to reach 40,000 new veterans receiving VA benefits within four years.
Every Tennessean gets a warning in time and finds an accessible shelter when disaster strikes, through a 95-county emergency management assessment, last-mile alert pilots in high-risk areas, and a statewide shelter accessibility inventory.
The 2020 Cookeville tornado killed 19 people at 1:50 in the morning and the 2021 Waverly flood killed 20 people because warnings couldn't reach them. Nighttime tornadoes kill at 2.5 times the rate of daytime events, a disparity directly tied to warning reach.
Tennessee has invested hundreds of millions in disaster infrastructure: a $100 million reserve fund, a statewide weather mesonet now under construction, and FirstNet integration for all 118 public safety answering points. What hasn't been built is the local capacity to use it. The gap between detecting a storm and getting a warning to a house at 2 a.m. remains critical. And Tennessee has no published shelter list with accessibility information, despite over 1.7 million adults with disabilities.
We'll close those gaps with a 95-county emergency management assessment, last-mile warning pilots in the highest-risk areas, and a statewide shelter inventory with accessibility details and live status reporting so families can find a confirmed-open shelter when a storm hits.
Send a behavioral health professional to every mental health crisis call, by funding city co-responder and alternative-response teams and stationing clinicians in 911 dispatch.
Memphis invented Crisis Intervention Team training in 1988. Nashville runs co-responder and fire-based behavioral health programs through Partners in Care. Knoxville's co-responder teams resolve 97% of calls without arrest. These programs work but none of them are fully staffed or funded for expansion.
We'll expand crisis response through competitive matching grants. Cities choose their model: co-responder, alternative response, or hybrid. Behavioral health clinicians stationed in metro 911 dispatch centers will screen incoming calls and divert behavioral health crises to crisis teams instead of patrol officers.
Far from defunding police, this frees officers to focus on real crime instead of spending half their shift on calls they aren't equipped for.
End 287(g) agreements that turn Tennessee sheriffs and police into federal immigration agents, so officers can focus on the cases their communities actually need them on.
Local law enforcement answers to Tennessee voters, not Washington. When sheriffs and police chiefs act as federal immigration agents through 287(g) agreements, they compromise their ability to do the job their communities need: preventing crime, solving cases, and maintaining the trust that makes policing work.
Research shows that when immigrant communities fear local police, they're 61% less likely to report crimes and 43% less likely to report being victims. A county where people are afraid to call 911 is not a safer county. Meanwhile, Tennessee's immigrant-led households paid $2.68 billion in taxes and hold $8.2 billion in spending power.
Local police should focus on local public safety. Federal immigration enforcement belongs to federal authorities trained and funded for that mission.
