An 11-year-old boy in eastern Tennessee grabbed his father’s shotgun and fired once, killing an 8-year-old neighbor girl — because she wouldn’t let him see her puppy. The boy was convicted of murder, but the adult gun owner was not charged with a crime.
In 2016, a few months after the shooting, Tennessee state Sen. Sara Kyle introduced a bill that would have made it a crime for a gun owner to allow a child easy access to a loaded firearm. The National Rifle Association helped doom that legislation and Kyle’s subsequent efforts.
So last year the Memphis Democrat tried a different approach: She introduced a bill exempting from state sales tax the purchases of gun locks, gun safes and other safety devices.
