On Memorial Day 2023, something curious happened in downtown Franklin that I’ve been thinking about lately: several men in body armor and pirate hats strolled through the streets toting AR-15-style assault rifles.
The leader, Shaun Kranish, was a far-right provocateur who has spent the past two decades pushing an anti-government agenda online and in public. In 2007, he encouraged readers of his blog to take up arms and join anti-government militants who were bogged down in a monthslong standoff with law enforcement. “THIS IS LIFE OR DEATH!” he wrote at the time. “DON’T GO UNLESS YOU’LL FIGHT.” More recently, he has claimed on social media that “insiders,” not Islamic radicals, carried out the September 11th terror attacks.
But Kranish’s primary fixation is, and has long been, on promoting the dangerous, ahistorical view that any regulation on firearms infringes on the Second Amendment, despite the fact that the current, right-leaning Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled otherwise.
Kranish, who grew up in Illinois and relocated to Spring Hill several years ago, has been arrested on weapons charges numerous times (though he has often pleaded down or managed to have his cases dismissed). He came to Franklin that Memorial Day to make a point about guns.
Over the past decade or so, Tennessee lawmakers have aggressively, and recklessly, loosened all manner of state gun laws, including the need for a person to obtain a permit before carrying a loaded handgun in public. Predictably, gun deaths have soared, and our state now has one of the highest rates of gun violence in the nation. State Senator Jack Johnson, of Franklin, bears the blame for much of this needless bloodshed, having carried some of the state’s most misguided and consequential pro-violence gun bills. But other Williamson County lawmakers, including Gino Bulso, Jake McCalmon, and Lee Reeves, have supported extremist gun bills as well.
But, to Kranish’s disappointment, Tennessee still has a few gun laws on the books.
That Memorial Day in Franklin, police officers stopped him outside Mellow Mushroom and told him that, under Tennessee law, an individual cannot carry a loaded rifle or shotgun in public except when hunting “or something of that matter,” one officer explained. “You’re scaring people,” the officer added.
“They’re just going to have to get used to it,” Kranish replied, adding, “They got to deal with it.”
Franklin officers, for reasons not plainly clear in a video recording of the exchange, did not arrest Kranish for brandishing a loaded rifle in Franklin. But in November of 2024, Nashville law enforcement refused to tolerate such lawlessness and arrested Kranish after he brought a weapon to Radnor Lake State Park. (He has denied any wrongdoing.)
Incredibly, some of our lawmakers — Bulso, McCalmon, and Reeves — are rushing to aid Kranish and other radicals by co-sponsoring a bill, HB 2064*, that aims to repeal criminal offenses of unlawfully carrying a loaded rifle in public parks, playgrounds, or civic centers. The same bill also would allow persons convicted of stalking or domestic violence to possess a firearm after five years. (Another bill, HB 1189, would have similar horrific effects.)
Williamson County is full of well-meaning voters, right and left, who support the Second Amendment — as I certainly do, as a sportsman — but who also understand that nutjobs like Kranish only bring a loaded AR-15 onto our streets to menace the rest of us and to infringe upon our right to peace and prosperity. We should demand that our lawmakers reflect our sensible views in the General Assembly and not empower radicals who want to turn our state into a Mad Max apocalyptic fever dream of violence and bloodshed.
One last thing:
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that yesterday The Tennessean reported that the average income for families applying for the state’s school-voucher program is $96,000 — 20% above the state median family income. These well-off families stand to benefit from Governor Lee’s and Senator Jack Johnson’s plan to siphon around $300 million annually from public coffers to private schools — while our public schools are some of the most unfunded in the nation and Tennessee’s childhood poverty rate is around 20%. Truly despicable stuff.
*Update: HB 2064 seems to be dead for the year, but our lawmakers’ support of the bill still warrants pushback.