Tennessee's Next Governor: Abortion, Immigration And 10 Other Issues Where Lee And Dean Differ

Over the past year, WPLN has been asking the candidates for governor where they stand on topics important to Tennessee voters.

Now that former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, a Democrat, and Williamson County businessman Bill Lee, a Republican, have clinched their parties' nominations, we're pulling their answers together. Read on to see what they think about a dozen key issues.

What do you see as the key to preventing mass shootings?

Karl Dean: I think, number one, we have a conversation in our state around access to guns. ... It seems to me that there can be a common agreement that keeping firearms out of the hands of people that are dangerous — whether they have criminal records, whether they have some sort of mental illness, whether they are prone to violence, domestic violence or whatever that's been shown — that maybe our background needs to be better.

Bill Lee: We could never afford to bring about and institute policies and government programs that are going to address the mental health challenges of our state. I think again that's where we're going to engage the nonprofit communities across the state and the private sector, in fact, to address the root causes of some of these challenges that we have in our society.

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