Nashville's local news and NPR station

Here are the bills that gun control advocates are watching during this Tennessee legislative session

Paige PflegerWPLN News
Share:

Every year, dozens of bills related to guns are introduced in Tennessee’s legislature. Here are the bills that gun control advocates are looking out for in the upcoming session.

Arming teachers

Republican Rep. Jay Reedy filed a House bill that would allow local directors of schools to essentially deputize certain employees, like teachers or other personnel, to carry a concealed handgun on school grounds.

Right now, that power is only granted to school districts that are considered “distressed rural counties” that couldn’t otherwise afford a school resource officer or security guard.

The bill does not have a Senate sponsor — and could not become law without one.

Gun control groups, like Moms Demand Action Tennessee, plan to oppose this legislation.

Lowering age requirements

Last year, Republican Rep. Chris Todd introduced a bill to lower the carrying age from 21 to 18 years old. While the bill passed the House, it did not pass the Senate.

In order for a similar policy to get resurrected, it would need to be reintroduced.

And if it were, Linda McFadyen-Ketchum of Moms Demand Action Tennessee says the group would oppose it.

“They don’t need to be carrying openly or concealed at that age,” she says, “because they are in the group of folks who do most of the shooting.”

In six of the nine deadliest mass shootings since 2018, the shooters were 21 or younger.

Treating gun violence as a public health crisis

Democratic Sen. London Lamar of Memphis introduced a bill requiring the Department of Health to track public health impacts of gun violence in communities.

The goal would be to identify and track areas that are most impacted by gun violence and then direct resources toward hospitals and youth in those places to work on violence prevention.

Some local municipalities are already looking toward violence interruption models. Nashville, for example, set aside more than $1.5 million for its first city-funded violence interruption pilot.

Guns in cars

Back in 2013, a law passed allowing gun owners to treat their cars like an extension of their house when it comes to carrying.

Since then, the number of firearms stolen from vehicles in Nashville has ballooned — nearing 1,400 last year.

And Nashville is not alone.

Moms Demand Action Tennessee plans to either introduce its own bill, or support someone else’s, that would require secure storage of guns in cars. The group hopes a secure storage bill would also help stem the number of road rage related shootings.

Extreme risk protection order

Gun control advocates in Tennessee have long called for an extreme risk protection order bill, commonly known as a red flag law. These laws allow families or law enforcement to request a person’s access to firearms be restricted temporarily, if that person is at risk of harming themselves or others.

While Moms Demand Action Tennessee and other gun control groups want to see a red flag introduced, they still cannot find a Republican lawmaker to sponsor one.

Paige Pfleger, Criminal Justice Reporter

Paige Pfleger covers criminal justice for WPLN News. She has investigated guns and juvenile justice as a fellow with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, and her investigation into domestic violence and firearms dispossession won a regional Edward R. Murrow award and was a finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and a Livingston Award. She previously covered criminal justice and addiction in Ohio and was named the state's reporter of the year by the Associated Press. Her work has appeared nationally on NPR, The Washington Post, Marketplace, and PRI's The World, and she has worked in the newsrooms of The Tennessean, Michigan Radio, WHYY, Vox and NPR headquarters in DC.

on-air light On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM