Nashville Democrats Rep. Caleb Hemmer (House District 59) and Sen. Jeff Yarbro (Senate District 21) are set to introduce a new safe-gun-storage bill in the next year’s state legislative session.
Gun safety has been a continued focus for the two lawmakers. Earlier this year, the pair introduced HB 1667/SB 1695, which would have allowed large cities and municipalities in Tennessee to regulate the safe storage of guns left in unattended cars. That bill failed to even make it to a floor vote in Tennessee’s Republican-supermajority General Assembly.
Yarbro and Hemmer held a joint press conference Wednesday in Nashville's Cordell Hull State Office Building, where they said they are still "fine-tweaking" the legislation, which has not yet been filed. The new bill resembles previous attempts at ensuring safe storage of guns in motor vehicles. If passed, the legislation could see citizens who fail to secure guns in their vehicles sent to court-ordered training classes that promote safe storage of firearms.
“We're not trying to punish people who are not breaking the law, except for this storage provision,” Yarbro said. “We're trying to get them to be responsible, law-abiding gun owners.”
Hemmer spoke of his own personal experience as a student at Nashville’s John Trotwood Moore Middle School. In 1994, an accidental shooting at the school claimed the life of 13-year-old Terrance Murray — the first, and still the only, instance of fatal gun violence in a Metro Nashville public school. (A deadly Nashville shooting last year that claimed the lives of three students and three teachers took place at the Covenant School, which is a private school.) The gun that killed Murray, accidentally fired by a 13-year-old classmate, made its way into the building after it was left unsecured by an adult.
People are still grieving the deaths of three students and three staff members — and still asking for gun safety legislation
“We're really asking gun owners to do their part and make it a safer community,” said Hemmer, who touted recent gun-safety successes, including funding to provide free gun locks to citizens. “It's really about personal responsibility.”
According to an Aug. 27 Metro Nashville Police Department release, the majority of reported gun thefts continue to come from vehicles, with 583 guns stolen from vehicles in Nashville so far this year. That is a 29 percent decrease in guns stolen from vehicles by the same date in 2023.
MNPD also reports that its "special initiative to combat car theft and related crimes" has resulted in 732 arrests and the recoveries of 384 stolen vehicles and 138 guns since Feb. 1 of this year.
Hemmer and Yarbro’s press conference also saw remarks from gun reform advocates from Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action.
Jeff Yarbro
“Let's be clear: This is a problem that we in the legislature created,” Yarbro said, citing a 2013 law that allows valid handgun permit carriers to keep guns in their vehicles in “any public or private parking area” — if the gun is “kept from ordinary observation and locked within the trunk, glove box, or interior of the person's motor vehicle or a container securely affixed to the motor vehicle if the person is not in the motor vehicle.”
Yarbro called the law, which had no legal consequences for failing to secure guns in cars, “one of the most reckless laws that has the clearest data demonstrating its dangerous outcomes.”
In 2021, Tennessee's permitless handgun bill was signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee in a ceremony inside Beretta USA's firearms factory in Gallatin. That law was criticized by the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association and Brentwood Police Department, among other law enforcement organizations.
Earlier this year, NewsChannel 5 reported that 46 guns were reported stolen from vehicles statewide in 2013. That number jumped to more than 2,000 in 2016, with nearly 30,000 guns stolen from vehicles between 2013 and 2022.
Gov. Bill Lee, surrounded by state lawmakers at Beretta USA's Tennessee campus, signs the so-called constitutional carry legislation. June 2, 2021.
“This is one of those few places where there is an obvious, clear cause and effect of a law that was passed by the General Assembly and an effect that is felt in every one of our communities, and it's time for the legislature to do something about that,” Yarbro said.
A 2024 report from Everytown for Gun Safety, which uses 2022 Federal Bureau of Investigation crime data, detailed that on average, at least one gun is stolen from a car every nine minutes in the United States. Memphis ranks as the top city in America for reported gun thefts from cars, while Chattanooga and Nashville came in 12th and 13th, respectively.
“During this upcoming session, we will rewrite this narrative,” said Drew Spiegel, a Vanderbilt University sophomore and 2022 Highland Park, Ill., mass shooting survivor who serves as a Students Demand Action volunteer lead. “We can ensure that Tennessee is no longer a leader in stolen guns, but a leader of common-sense secure-storage policies.”
