SHELBY COUNTY, Tennessee —
There is no argument. You can own guns. You can shoot guns. You can sell them.
You can show them off. The question is, can you carry them.
Kick that around. Memphis and Shelby County have more licensed gun owners than any other county in the state. Nobody has any idea about how many illegal weapons are out there.One way to get them has been to charge somebody with unlawful possession of a weapon.That's the issue, according to Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich.
She says, "How do we identify these individuals within the community that are allowed to be carrying and are not allowed to be carrying."
Look at people. Any group will do. See if you can pick out somebody who is a convicted felon. Someone who has been convicted of domestic violence. Someone with a mental illness.
"Right now," Weirich says, "you can carry in public if you get a permit. It is not that onerous a task to get a permit. It helps us identify those individuals who, by law, shouldn't be carrying a handgun."
RELATED: Is Gov. Lee’s proposed bill to allow Tennesseans to carry guns without permits a good idea?
The plan proposed by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has already gone through several legislative committees. In a state where a legislature has given the right for people to carry a handgun in a bar, folks say the Lee plan should fly through the halls of the General Assembly, slick as the polished floors of the statehouse, where you are not allowed to carry a weapon, by the way.
There are supporters of this idea, people who think it will make Tennessee a better place. However, some feel gun safety education should remain mandatory. Gary Richardson says he's torn. He is a Second Amendment supporter, but he is worried about what this will do to his friends who teach gun safety.
Still, he says "Most people would say it would cause crime to decrease because an armed society is a polite society as the saying goes."
He can say it. We couldn't find any facts to back that up, but he can say it.