25% of Tennessee State Legislators have concealed handgun permits

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports:

Tennesseans may want to treat their state legislators with a little more respect in the future: Records show one out of every four members of the Tennessee General Assembly has a state-issued permit to carry a loaded handgun.

Thirty-four of the legislature’s 132 members hold handgun-carry permits, according to Department of Safety records cross-referenced with other available information such as home addresses.

That comes to 25.75 percent of the membership of the House and Senate, a figure about five times the percentage among the state’s general population.

In the 33-member Senate, one third or 11 senators, have a handgun-carry permit. Twenty-three legislators in the 99-member House — or 23.2 percent — have permits, records show.

Statewide, 219,236 Tennesseans have permits, meeting requirements that include being at least 21 and passing a handgun safety course. In 2007, they comprised about 4.67 percent of the estimated 4,687,000 adult Tennesseans ages 18 and older, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. No 2007 data on how many adult Tennesseans who are 21 and above was available. . . .