Guns, God and family were prominent topics of discussion Monday night during a political forum between two candidates seeking election to the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Paul Sherrell is being challenged by Bobby Robinson for the state House seat in the 43rd District, which has been redrawn to cover all of Warren and White counties.
Both men are Republicans who are meeting in the Aug. 4 Republican Primary. Early voting begins July 15.
Sherrell talked about the benefits of living in the 43rd District and he touched on his beliefs in his opening statement.
“Warren County and White County are two good counties to live in, to work in, to raise your children in, or to retire in,” said Sherrell. “The office I’m allowed to sit in in Nashville is your office and I want to represent you. I work to protect our rights to bear arms. I understand the belief that life starts at conception. I understand marriage is between a man and a woman, according to the Bible.”
Bobby Robinson talked about his 34 years in business and the importance of preparing our children for the future.
“If we’re ever going to change the future and change our path, it’s with the kids,” said Robinson. “White and Warren counties are great counties, a great place to raise your family. I’ve worked all over this country and there’s no place I’d rather be than right here. This district, the 43rd District, is what I’m about. I’ve got a job. I’m not looking for one of them. I work every day. I’m looking to make a change in this district. That’s what we have to do to help our kids and help our future.”
The candidates were asked questions on a variety of issues.
TERM LIMITS
Sherrell said, “It takes time to go down there and learn people and for them to trust you and for you to trust them. You don’t do that in a short period of time. Do I believe in term limits? Yes, I do. I was elected in 2016, 2018, 2020 and hope to be reelected in 2022. I’m 63 years old and hopefully soon, good Lord willing, I’ll be able to go home and enjoy my time. I don’t want to be there when I’m 90 years old.”
Robinson said, “We do have term limits. It’s called get out and vote. If you do your diligence as a voter, you can have term limits. If you don’t like what they’re doing, change it. Vote for somebody else.”
GUN CONTROL
Robinson said, “You can
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make all the gun laws you want for law-abiding citizens and it’s not going to help the problem. You have to make the law stiffer for the man or woman who uses that gun in a crime. That’s where it’s got to start. It’s got to start with making them more accountable for what they do. We need to do more to help raise these kids. … These kids today sit on a Nintendo game and kill 20 people and then they hit reset and it don’t work that way in real life. You can make all the gun laws you want, but until you start doing something to the people using them and making them accountable for it, it’s not going to change. They’d think a lot more about what
they’re doing and what the consequences are if the penalties were stiffer because with that video game there are no consequences.”
Sherrell said, “The gun is not the problem. I can lay that gun right there and it won’t harm a person. The gun is not the problem. Folks, we have some people in our society today who are sick. You have to be in your right mind before you should be carrying a weapon. The people who are killing these people, they’ve got problems. It ain’t the gun problem. It’s the people who are sick. But we’re in a society today where we’ve got problems. We’ve got to get these people from out playing Nintendo and get them out here and get them to work.”
BANNING BOOKS
Robinson said, “When I was a kid, I always wanted to look at the books on the wrong rack but my daddy taught me better. I don’t think we need pornography on the shelves of our libraries. I think we need a commission to look at those books and make sure we’re not teaching our kids filth. There’s enough filth in their pocket on their phone. We don’t need them reading filth in a public place that we put there.”
Sherrell said, “There are books in our school system in the library that are nasty. I have pictures of books that someone brought from a school library in Nashville to show some of what’s in it. Terrible. It does not need to be in our school system where our children can see it. I don’t want to see it. They don’t need to see it. We have to do something to stop some of these books that are in our school system. Some way or another, we have to keep it out of our children’s hands.”
