Nashville’s Metro Council unanimously supports hiring an investigator to disarm prohibited people

Nashville’s Metro Council unanimously supported a resolution that would have the city hire a dedicated firearms dispossession investigator. That position would ensure that people who are barred from having guns because of criminal convictions wouldn’t have access to them.

In Tennessee, someone can be barred from possessing a firearm for a felony conviction, a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction, or if they are subject to an order of protection. It’s one of few states that allows people to give their guns to a third party like a friend or a relative but doesn’t require the recipient of the guns to be identified.

When someone is ordered by a court to give up their guns in Nashville, there is no enforcement. Nobody checks to make sure the person has been disarmed.

It’s a dangerous flaw in the system that advocates say leaves domestic violence victims vulnerable. Reporting from WPLN and ProPublica found that nearly 40% of victims in domestic violence shootings in the city were killed by someone who should not have had access to a firearm at the time of the shooting.

“That’s a loophole that we actually have the ability to close in local government,” Metro Council member Brenda Gadd told WPLN News.

Gadd introduced the resolution to carveout money in the amended city budget to hire an official who investigates reports of people who have guns when they shouldn’t. The investigator could get a warrant, and then go and get the firearms.

It’s a solution that has proven effective in other places — in Denver, a firearms dispossession investigator with the local district attorney’s office helped collect more than 40 guns from people who should not have had access to them in the first few months on the job, according to reporting from NPR member station WAMU.

More: Guns In Dangerous Hands; an investigative series on the flaws in Tennessee’s justice system and the victims who suffer the consequences.

But it’s still not clear which Nashville agency is going to take ownership of fixing the problem.

Back in October, District Attorney Glenn Funk appeared in front of the Metro Council and said, “I am reluctant to say that our office is the proper place to put someone whose main job description is firearm disposition. But we definitely need one as a city.”

The investigator could work under the District Attorney’s office, or Metro Nashville Police. Either way, the Metro Council plans to include funding for the role in their amended budget. If all goes according to plan, Gadd said an investigator could be in place by the beginning of 2026.