Some lies just won’t die, and the results can be dangerous. You know, like vaccines cause autism. Or the 2020 election was stolen. Both totally debunked, and dangerous.

Here’s another dangerous lie: More guns make us safer.

Decades of data say the opposite. In Tennessee, we’ve seen what happens when gun-industry-funded politicians push the industry line that any regulation of firearms is a government “gun grab.” Panicked people buy more guns. Lawmakers make it easier to buy (or steal or find) guns. Gun crime goes up. Panicked people buy more guns. The winners are the gun industry and politicians who get elected by fueling the panic.

Between 2011 and 2021, as our Republican supermajority government systematically loosened our gun laws, the number of children shot to death in Tennessee rose 180 percent. Tennessee ranks ninth for gun deaths of children, fifth for gun murders of children, and fourth for accidental shootings involving children. Guns are the number-one cause of death of children in Tennessee.

Our Republican lawmakers say they want to protect our kids . . . it’s just, you know, Second Amendment.

Or maybe it’s this:

 After the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, when Gov. Bill Lee called a special legislative session to discuss a red flag law, the American Firearms Association sent a letter to every Republican legislator threatening political retribution against those who didn’t “block this bill from moving forward at every single turn, every single motion, and every single vote.”

The letter ended this way:

“We know how to fundraise, we know how to build lists, we know how to message to gun voters, we know how to expose RINO Republicans who betray their voters at election time. And we never forget.”

Whether it’s the AFA or the NRA, the modern gun industry operates like the mafia. Our Republican lawmakers empowered them; now they’re scared of them. When they say they want to protect our kids, that’s just another lie.

Please support gun-safety candidates for a better, safer Tennessee.