The Following Report is From Holler
Governor Bill Lee has just appointed Jordan Mollenhour of Knoxville to the State Board of Education, the governing and policy-making body for Tennessee’s Pre-K-12 public education system. What the articles about the appointment haven’t mentioned is Mollenhour’s very concerning history as an online ammunition dealer, owning an online company with an obscure ownership trail that according to the St. Louis Dispatch sold thousands of bullets to at least one mass shooter.In a 2014 article called “HOW THE AURORA SHOOTER GOT HIS AMMO” by Todd Frankel, then of the St. Louis Dispatch, Frankel follows the trail of the sale of the bullets used in the murder of 12 people and the injuring of 58 others in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater all the way to Knoxville, and then on to Atlanta. It seems Jordan Mollenhour and his partner Dustin Gross, both University of Tennessee graduates, owned the company that sold that massive amount of bullets online to the Aurora shooter.
Governor Lee has just appointed Mollenhour to the Board of Education.Here’s our post about it from this week. The Dispatch article also summarizes the history of the ammo business in America, pointing out that it wasn’t always possible to order thousands of bullets online and have them show up to your door no questions asked, but that a piece of legislation in 1986 changed it so that they could.Maybe Chris Rock is right – If gun control is impossible to pass in our messed up, gun-sick nation – maybe restricting the ammo is what we should be focusing on… But in the meantime it seems fair to ask why Governor Lee is appointing someone with a sordid past that includes enabling at least one mass shooting in Colorado to a board of education overseeing what our kids learn.Selling thousands of bullets online to a mass killer wasn’t illegal, but it probably should be, and at the very least we shouldn’t be putting people who think it’s ok to make a living doing that in charge of our children’s education. We’ve now heard from multiple sources that Mollenhour’s kids are home schooled, that he is “extremely religious and right wing” and “stuck in the 1950’s” and “It is terrifying he could have any say over education in the state.”It’s worth noting that this isn’t Lee’s only questionable education appointment – Lee and Speaker Sexton just also recently appointed anti-Muslim 9/11 Truther Laurie Cardoza-Moore to the textbook commission.
Extremism at the highest levels of Tennessee’s government is on full display. And it’s our kids who will suffer.
We’ll keep our eye on this situation. In the meantime please consider chipping in monthly if you’re not yet doing so, even if it’s just a few bucks – the monthly support truly keeps us going.
