Proposed law would lower handgun carry age to 18 in Tennessee
Current state law prohibits people under the age of 21 from carrying a handgun unless they meet certain exemption criteria. That criteria includes being an active duty servicemember at least 18 years old, an honorably discharged veteran at least 18 years old, or have completed certain military basic training programs.
'Day Without Immigrants' rally held in Nashville
The proposed law, filed by State Sen. Paul Bailey (R-Sparta) would still prohibit juveniles from carrying handguns 'with the intent to go armed.'
That would be a Class A misdemeanor under the proposed law, and the firearm would be required to be confiscated and disposed of properly, according to the bill.
There are also exceptions built into the proposed bill, including juveniles who are at a hunter safety course or firearm safety course; at a target shooting range; at a shooting competition that uses firearms as part of the performance; hunting or trapping with a valid license; protecting livestock form predatory animals; accompanied by their parent or guardian and being instructed by that parent or guardian; or using 'justified' physical or deadly force at their own residence, among others.
Accordingly, the bill would allow for those at least 18 years old to apply for an enhanced or a concealed handgun carry permit, rather than having to wait until they are 21 years old.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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NBC News
8 hours ago
- NBC News
Why U.S. politicians are up in arms about new internet rules in Britain
A growing number of U.S. politicians are condemning a new British law that requires some websites and apps — including some based in the United States — to check the ages of users across the pond. A bipartisan group of members of Congress visited London recently to meet counterparts and air their concerns about the U.K.'s Online Safety Act, which went into effect July 25. Vice President JD Vance has been criticizing the law for months, as have privacy advocates who argue that the law infringes on free expression and disproportionately hurts vulnerable groups. Vance criticized the U.K. again on Friday, this time in person at the start of a visit to the country. Sitting alongside British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and speaking to reporters, Vance warned the U.K. against going down a 'very dark path' of online 'censorship' that he said was trod earlier by the Biden administration. The U.K. Online Safety Act is aimed at preventing children from accessing potentially harmful material online, and internet companies are now asking British users to verify their ages in a variety of ways, including with photos of their IDs, through a credit card provider or with selfies analyzed via age-check software. But the sweeping nature of the law has caught some Britons by surprise. They're being asked to prove their age not only for pornography websites but also before they can listen to songs with explicit lyrics or access message boards to discuss sensitive subjects. Reddit, for example, is restricting access to various pages including r/stopsmoking, r/STD and r/aljazeera. Reddit said in a post about its enforcement of the law that for people in the U.K., it was now verifying ages before they can 'view certain mature content.' A spokesperson for the company said r/STD — a message board focused on questions of sexual health — is restricted because of explicit images. They said r/stopsmoking is restricted because it deals with harmful substances and that r/aljazeera — which is not affiliated with the news organization of the same name but deals with similar topics — is restricted because it depicts serious injury or violence. To get around the new law, the use of virtual private network software that can mask a person's location, also known as VPNs, has surged in the U.K. The primary argument of U.S. politicians who oppose the law is that they don't want American tech companies to have to comply, even if they're serving British customers. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he raised his objections with U.K. government officials during meetings in London at the end of July. In a statement after his return, he said the law and other European regulations 'create a serious chilling effect on free expression and threaten the First Amendment rights of American citizens and companies.' 'We absolutely need to protect children and keep harmful, illegal content off these platforms — but when governments or bureaucracies suppress speech in the name of safety or regulation, it sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the core of Western democratic values,' Jordan said. The issue may come to a head in a couple of different venues. That could be the courts if any tech companies file lawsuits over the law, or it could come up in trade negotiations if President Donald Trump decides to press the issue with British politicians, although they say it's not open to debate in trade talks. Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and Meta board member with close ties to the Trump administration, recently called U.K. leaders to complain about the law, the Financial Times reported Friday. A spokesperson for Andreessen said the report was not true. The U.K.'s Online Safety Act is one of the most comprehensive national laws that any democracy has ever passed to try to curtail potentially harmful content online in the name of children. Parliament passed the law in 2023, and the government went through two years of writing detailed rules before putting the law into effect last month. The law is notable for a combination of reasons: the variety of content it applies to, the potential fines and the possible international reach. A wide array of content is at issue. While the 'primary' focus of the law is online material such as pornography and suicide, it also requires websites to age-gate content with bullying, serious violence, 'dangerous stunts' and 'exposure to harmful substances.' That has covered relatively mainstream services such as Spotify and Microsoft's Xbox gaming system. Companies that don't comply face potential fines of up to 10% of their global revenue, which for the biggest companies could be billions of dollars. The British regulator Ofcom, short for Office of Communications, says companies must use ' highly effective age assurance ' to restrict the riskiest types of content. And the U.K. has not been adamant that it won't allow international borders to stymie enforcement. Ofcom says it plans to apply the law to services with 'a significant number' of U.K. users, services where U.K. users 'are a target market' and services that are 'capable of being accessed' by U.K. users with a 'material risk of significant harm' to such users. The law appears to retain strong support among the British public. About 69% said they supported the new rules in a YouGov poll taken after implementation began, and 46% said they supported it 'strongly.' But 52% said they do not think the law will be very effective at preventing minors from accessing pornography. The law was passed during a previous, Conservative-led government and took effect under the current, Labour-led government. But the far-right party Reform U.K. is pushing for a repeal of the law. Party leader Nigel Farage, a former member of Parliament, has called it 'state suppression of genuine free speech,' and his party is running high in polls. 'Millions of people have noticed that what they're getting on their feeds is different to what it was,' Farage said at a recent news conference. Farage also met with visiting members of Congress last week, and the talks turned heated with Farage and Democrats exchanging insults, according to Politico, although the dispute appeared to be more about Trump's free speech restrictions than about the U.K. law. Most U.S.-based tech companies say they are complying with the new law. Microsoft said in a blog post that Xbox users in the U.K. would begin seeing notifications 'encouraging them to verify their age' as a 'one-time process,' with actual enforcement starting next year. If users don't comply, Microsoft warned, they'll lose access to social features of Xbox but will still be able to play games. Discord said it was implementing new default settings for all U.K. users, in effect treating everyone like a minor with heavy content filtering unless they verify that they're adults. Discord says users can choose to verify their age either with a face scan or an ID upload. Elon Musk's X has also restricted posts, including information about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, according to the BBC. X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. But a few services are not complying. The far-right social media site Gab, which allows white supremacist views and other extremist content, said in a notice on its website that it had received notices from Ofcom and, rather than comply, decided to block the entire U.K. from accessing its site. The company said in the notice: 'We refuse to comply with this tyranny.' Preston Byrne, a U.S. lawyer who specializes in technology issues, has said on X that he plans to file a lawsuit soon on behalf of an unnamed client seeking to quash possible enforcement of the British law within the United States. The subject has been simmering for months ahead of the law's implementation, and it came up in February when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the White House. In an Oval Office meeting, a reporter asked Trump what he thought of the U.K. approach to free speech, and Trump tossed the question to Vance, who expressed concern. 'We do have, of course, a special relationship with our friends in the U.K. and also with some of our European allies. But we also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British — of course, what the British do in their own country is up to them — but also affect American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens,' he said. Starmer defended his government's approach. 'We've had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very, very long time. Certainly, we wouldn't want to reach across U.S. systems and we don't, and that's absolutely right,' he said. British Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy later said the U.K. would not make any changes to the Online Safety Act as part of trade negotiations with the Trump administration. American privacy advocates are watching the debate play out with alarm, concerned that similar age verification laws — like new state laws targeting the Apple and Google app stores — would upend the internet closer to home. 'Young people should be able to access information, speak to each other and to the world, play games, and express themselves online without the government making decisions about what speech is permissible,' wrote Paige Collings, a senior speech and privacy activist at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a blog post Tuesday.
USA Today
20 hours ago
- USA Today
No Open in sight, but with DP World Tour event, Donald Trump's foothold in Scotland grows
This week, the DP World Tour has returned to Scottish soil for the Nexo Championship, which is being held at —whisper it — Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen. A late addition to the circuit's schedule, the event was originally called the Scottish Championship before a title sponsor hopped on board. In case you're wondering, Nexo is a premier digital assets wealth platform with its high-heeled yins proudly stating that, 'golf is a natural fit for our brand: elevated, global, and principled.' Is that not what Trump says about himself? Anyway, the Nexo Championship is the second significant event to be staged on Trump's golfing turf in the space of a few days, following the Staysure PGA Seniors' Championship, which concluded on Sunday. The other week, a petition urging the R&A not to take The Open back to Trump's Turnberry course was launched and earned upwards of 50,000 signatures. I've not found a petition against the staging of the Nexo Championship — the Scottish Government has chipped in with $240,000 of funding for it — or the golden oldies event on a Trump property yet. Amid all the fist-shaking, harrumphing, placard-waving and handwringing that greeted the U.S. President's visit to these shores last week, the actual golf events themselves clatter and batter on unhindered. Slowly but surely, Trump continues to establish a foothold in the business of championships on this side of the pond. My learned colleague, Ewan Murray of The Guardian, suggested in his own column recently that it would be no surprise to see a Scottish Open at Turnberry within the next few years. As Trump cut the ribbon on his second course at Balmedie last week, Guy Kinnings, the chief executive of the European Tour Group, was part of the ceremonial party. Presumably, any discussions about tournament golf at Trump-owned venues moved beyond the staging of the Nexo Championship? We all, meanwhile, know the championship Trump desperately craves. Despite all the 'dialogue' and 'feasibility work' about an Open at his treasured Turnberry, however, we all also know that there's probably more chance of the game's most celebrated major being held at Littlehill municipal while Trump is still around. In his homeland of the USA, Trump had a major, the PGA Championship, booked in at his Bedminster course in 2022 until the PGA of America stripped him of the honor after his incitement of the Capitol insurrection. PGA Championships are assigned to venues until 2032, while U.S. Opens are already locked in at various courses until 2043. The R&A, meanwhile, has announced Open venues only through 2027. Even if the prospect seems as remote as Point Nemo, The Open still remains Trump's best crack at a major championship. He may not be around to see it, mind you. It's hard to think that 10 years have hurtled by since we all trotted off down to Turnberry for the Women's Open of 2015 and the bold Donald hijacked affairs by birling about over the Ailsa course in his helicopter before making a grand entrance. That first morning of play was probably one of the most sigh-inducing days of my working life. Well, apart from the time there was no press lunch at an Amateur Championship one year. The bizarre circus unfolded not long after Trump had made his outlandish comments about Mexicans as his Presidential campaign became more volatile and divisive. Poor Lizette Salas, the daughter of Mexican immigrants who had spoken with quiet dignity on the eve of the championship about Trump's inflammatory rant, was encircled by cameras and microphones upon completing her opening round. In an elbowing, barging scrum of news reporters, she faced barking, salivating questions like, 'is he a racist?' instead of the more genteel, 'what club did you hit into the seventh?' It was all spectacularly unedifying on the first day of a women's major championship. About a year earlier, Peter Dawson, the then chief executive of the R&A, suggested that, 'it would be ludicrous if something said on the Presidential campaign trail dictated where an Open is held.' That observation didn't age particularly well, did it? Amid the general pandemonium that engulfed the Women's showpiece that day, a teenage Lydia Ko adopted an air of shrugging nonchalance to the whole palaver. 'I was on the 16th and saw the helicopter and I was like, 'man, that's a really nice helicopter, I'd love one,' she said at the time. Here in 2025, Trump's own heart's desire remains an Open Championship. For the time being, though, a Nexo Championship will do him. It's a telling foot on the DP World Tour ladder. He may climb a few rungs yet.
The Hill
21 hours ago
- The Hill
North Carolina Republicans are ready for Trump's school choice initiative
North Carolina is on the brink of becoming the first state to opt in to President Donald Trump's signature school choice initiative. Both the Republican-led House and Senate approved the ' Educational Choice for Children Act ' last month. Democratic Gov. Josh Stein had the chance to stand up for parental freedom and school choice. Instead, he chose to join the ranks of other Democratic governors who sold out parents and students in favor of entrenched education bureaucrats. I look forward to leading the North Carolina Senate in overriding the governor's veto to provide families with another avenue to choose the education that best meets their child's needs. We in North Carolina have been working toward universal school choice for more than a decade. In 2023, when the legislature overrode then-Gov. Roy Cooper's veto and made taxpayer-funded school choice scholarships available to every family in the state, a key parental choice battle was won. Now, we're poised to expand on that win even further because of President Trump's leadership. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 — a defining domestic policy achievement for President Trump's second term — allows states to opt in to a new federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for contributions to organizations offering scholarships to students who wish to attend a private school. This is a monumental shift enabling philanthropic giving aimed at student-centered investments in education. That means parents will have even more resources at their disposal to send their children to the school that's right for them. This major federal move toward educational freedom, ushered in by President Trump and delivered over the finish line by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), is a landmark moment in American education policy. When the idea of publicly funded education gained traction in the 19th century, it represented a shift from an exclusive luxury available only to the economically (and racially) privileged, to universally accessible public education. Free schools, funded by taxpayers, meant the children of sharecroppers and day laborers had the opportunity to escape their economic class and enjoy a life their parents couldn't. We no longer live in the 19th century. Today, class difference doesn't segregate who can go to school and who can't, but it does segregate who can go to the school that's best for them and who is stuck in a school that doesn't suit their God-given gifts. Today, parents have a multitude of schooling options for their kids. They ought to have the economic freedom and ability to choose among them. It does not make sense to impose a 19th-century framework on the 21th-century education landscape. It is outdated to assign students to single schools and force parents to fork over more money (in addition to what they already pay in taxes) if they want, and their child needs, something different. In other words, we should no longer fund systems and bureaucracies. We can, and should, fund students. That is why we fought for more than a decade in North Carolina to create a taxpayer-funded scholarship program available to all families who do not believe their assigned district school is the right place for their children. Now, North Carolina families aren't required to double-pay for their child's K-12 education — first in taxes, then for tuition. They can receive an Opportunity Scholarship, funded with their tax dollars, and use it to attend a private school. And in the near future, if the legislature successfully overrides Stein's veto and opts in to the 'One Big Beautiful Bill's' school choice tax credit, North Carolina parents will have yet more opportunity to choose a school that helps their children realize their full potential. North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall (R) and I have made this a priority for the General Assembly. We both agree: President Trump's leadership presents an opportunity to improve the educational options available to North Carolina families, and it's incumbent on us to follow through on it.
