NASHVILLE – Gun safety advocates are vowing to come back next year after a House panel on Tuesday defeated their bill that would have made it a crime for adults to leave unlocked, loaded guns accessible to children.
On a 7-2, party-line vote, Republicans on the House Civil Justice Committee voted down the bill named MaKayla’s Law after an 8-year-old Jefferson County, Tenn., girl was fatally shot last year by an 11-year-old boy after she refused to let him play with her puppy. The boy grabbed his father’s loaded shotgun from a closet.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sherry Jones, D-Nashville, asserted later that the panel “voted to allow irresponsible gun owners to continue to leave their guns out so children can pick them up and continue this long line of injuries and deaths by children who are able to access guns.”
The National Rifle Association’s political and lobbying arm had issued an alert urging Tennessee lawmakers to vote against the measure, calling it “unnecessary and unenforceable” and arguing gun safety education of children and parents, not legislation, is the answer.
Beth Joslin Roth with the Safe Tennessee Project, which backed the bill, said despite the bill having support from “responsible gun owners” and others, the panel members “collectively shrugged their shoulders” and voted no.