With all the “Guns in X” bills that have been all over the legislature the past couple of years, this one slipped right by me. HB 2376 makes it illegal for Law Enforcement agencies to destroy seized weapons unless they are inoperable or unsafe.
Both Memphis Mayor A C Wharton and Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell have opposed the bill.
Last night at the Mayoral forum Sheriff Luttrell mentioned the law, noting that it has been the policy of his office since 2006 to destroy seized weapons rather than put them back into circulation, despite the revenue that such sales might have provided the department.
The bill passed in the State House (86-3) and in the Senate (26-4) at the end of the session last year. Both Houses reconciled the bill and it was submitted and signed by the Governor on March 4th of this year. The bill will become law on April 12th.
On March 5th, the NRA noted the bill’s signature on it’s website.
Making the sale of confiscated weapons mandatory seems like a serious overstep on the part of the state. Each county and municipality should have the authority to determine what is right for its community, rather than be dictated to by the state legislature on this issue. The revelation that two guns used in recent high profile shootings only makes that more clear, even though the sale of those weapons came years before the enactment of this law.
I’m not sure why this bill was so important to it’s sponsors, Rep. David Shepard and Sen. Doug Jackson, who is also responsible for the Guns in Bars bill, among others, but here’s to hoping that at some point these folks will stop focusing so much on firearms access, and spend a little more time on something that effects all of us, like say employment access.
[...] concur with the latest iteration of the TN hippie contingent: Making the sale of confiscated weapons mandatory seems like a serious overstep on the part of the [...]