The 113th Session of the Tennessee General Assembly convenes next week and at least one Memphis lawmaker got a head start on introducing legislation to address Memphis' high crime. London Lamar (D-Memphis) hopes to give the state's largest urban counties the option to require gun permits for its citizens.
The lack of permitting and firearm accountability in Tennessee has resulted in thousands of stolen weapons ending up in the hands of teenagers.
She's also hoping for speedier testing of rape kits by the TBI and taped interrogations of juveniles suspected of crimes. Political analyst Otis Sanford says only one of these issues may get some traction in the legislature in which the Republican supermajority has a storied history of opposing reform-oriented laws specifically targeted at urban areas, while also imposing unpopular laws that rural Republicans would never approve for their own communities, such as school vouchers.
