This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network.
Judges across Tennessee are now demanding greater accountability from people who have been ordered to give up their guns, a shift aimed at strengthening protections for domestic violence victims.
The change is being adopted county by county, after state lawmakers bowed to opposition from the National Rifle Association over a bill that would have taken that reform statewide.
The move follows reporting by WPLN and ProPublica over the past two years that found Tennessee’s lax gun laws and enforcement have allowed firearms to remain in dangerous hands. The state consistently has one of the highest rates of women killed by men, and most of those homicides are committed with guns. The news organizations’ analysis found that about 1 in 4 victims of domestic violence gun homicides were killed by someone who was barred from having a firearm.
In Tennessee, when someone is convicted of a domestic violence charge or is subject to an order of protection, they are not allowed to possess a gun. A person ordered to relinquish their firearm can turn it over to a third party, like a friend or relative, for safekeeping. But the state doesn’t require them to disclose whose hands the weapon ends up in. Advocates say that makes it hard to ensure that the guns were given up — and that they were given to someone who is legally allowed to hold on to them.
As part of its investigation, WPLN and ProPublica reported on an East Tennessee county that had transformed its justice system for domestic violence victims. Scott County’s reforms include a requirement that when a court is stripping domestic violence abusers of their guns, they must tell the court in a written affidavit who is going to take custody of their weapons. The county also asks for the address of that person, who is asked to sign an affidavit saying they are in receipt of the weapons. None of these extra measures of accountability, however, are required on the state’s standard gun-dispossession form.
“The [state’s] form is really incomplete,” said Becky Bullard with Nashville’s Office of Family Safety. “We can’t have someone dispossess of their firearm lawfully if we don’t know who they’re giving the gun to.”
At least nine counties, including Tennessee’s two largest, Davidson and Shelby, have amended the state’s gun dispossession affidavit to require information about who will be taking possession of the weapon. Other counties are also considering the change, advocates say.
“When I heard about what Scott County was doing, I was shocked,” said Shelby County Judge Greg Gilbert, who adjusted that court’s form when he found out that courts were able to do that themselves. “It does make it a little more likely that people will take this seriously.”
Last year, two Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would have made Scott County’s form the default for the rest of the state, but the bill was pushed to 2026 after opposition from the Tennessee Firearms Association and the NRA. Neither association responded to requests for comment at the time. One of the lawmakers who introduced the bill, Sen. Becky Massey, a Knox County Republican, said she would move forward with the bill again if her House counterpart, Rep. Kelly Keisling, did. But Keisling, a Republican whose district includes Scott County, said he is “uncertain as to the future of this particular piece of legislation.”
This month, advocates for victims of domestic violence also pushed for a state council on domestic violence to recommend adoption of the amended form. That effort failed after a procedural mishap; the group plans to revisit the topic at its next meeting in March.
“We really do not have a minute to lose. This is a battle that we have been fighting around a form for years,” said Bullard, who has advocated for this reform since a deadly shooting in 2018 at a Waffle House where the man traveled with a gun that he was ordered to give up. “And it could affect someone in the next minute.”
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