MEMPHIS, Texas — Memphis City Council is pledging to not back down against gun reform after a gun lobbying group filed a lawsuit against the city on Wednesday.
Gun Owners of America filed the lawsuit after all three gun referendums passed in Memphis on Election Day. The measures aim to ban permitless carry, prohibit assault weapons and allow courts to take someone's gun away from them if they are found to be a significant danger or extreme risk to themselves or others.
The gun lobbying group is based in both California and Virginia. Chris Stone with Gun Owners of America said the referendums that were passed in Memphis go against current state law.
"They're essentially attacking three of the kind of main gun control laws that we see the gun control movement trying to chip away at," Stone said.
Stone said their goal is to fight for 2nd Amendment rights for their members in Tennessee, which exceeds 50,000 members statewide. He said this lawsuit is not the first one they've filed over gun legislation.
"I know that we have filed lawsuits in the state of Florida. We've filed a lot of lawsuits in the federal circuit court. As far as our legal advances, we are active up the whole gambit," he said.
Memphis City Council chairman, JB Smiley, Jr. called this lawsuit pointless.
Right now, the gun referendums that were passed cannot be enforced due to state law.
"They don't know what they are suing about. It's a vote of the people, there is no meaningful legislation at this point in time. Whether it be meaningful legislation to come, wait and see," Smiley said.
Smiley said he believes the lawsuit more than likely will be dismissed.
"When people bring a frivolous lawsuits, there's something called Rule 11, you can bring a Rule 11 sanction against a lawyer for bringing a frivolous lawsuit," he said. "I don't think we're going to do that. I think our positions going to be, 'It's baseless, and we're going to ask the court to dismiss it.'"
Smiley said the council are working with state lawmakers that live in Memphis to create a bipartisan gun reform law by next year's session.