Ahead of the specially called session on public safety, Democrats have introduced several gun reform measures. One of them would close a dangerous loophole that allows people to turn over their guns to a friend or a relative.
In some states, when people are ordered to give up their guns because of a felony or domestic violence conviction, they have to give them to law enforcement or a licensed firearms dealer. However, in about a dozen states, including Tennessee, they can also give guns to a third party.
And Tennessee doesn’t require the third party to even be identified on the firearms dispossession affidavit. That makes it difficult to ensure that those third parties aren’t themselves also prohibited from having guns, or to punish them if they give guns back to the owners.
“We’re saying: ‘We trust you to give this gun to someone, and not to steal it back or have access to it whenever you want,’ or for that third party to just give it back to them,” said Becky Bullard of Nashville’s Office of Family Safety, which works with domestic violence victims.
A joint investigation by WPLN and ProPublica has revealed that Tennessee’s dispossession system is routinely failing to separate dangerous people from their weapons. In Nashville since 2007, nearly 40% of domestic violence gun homicides victims were killed by someone barred from having access to a weapon.
This is not the first time that legislation has been introduced to get rid of third party dispossession. A similar proposal was introduced after the 2018 Waffle House shooting in Antioch, but it failed. And with a Republican-dominated legislature, it’s likely this measure will meet the same fate.
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