Tennessee Firearms Assoc. Inc.

I grew up in Nashville and no longer live there, but my Dad does. He tells me that Nashville at one time had a law or requirement for citizens to register their handguns if you lived in Davidson County. He says that a couple of his handguns are registered at the Metro Police Department.

Questions: Is anyone else aware of a Metro handgun registration law? Does anyone know if this requirement is still in effect? If so, where can I find a citation of it?

This afternoon, I looked at the website below that contains the Metro code and could only find a Metro handgun carry permit law.
See: http://www.municode.com/resources/gatew ... 214&sid=42

Thanks in advance for any responses.

There is no gun registration per se in Nashville, or in Tennessee, for that matter. Prior to enactment of the statewide handgun carry permit law, there were at least 95 different sets of rules & regulations governing carrying handguns (one per county...individual municipalities could, and did, have their own, in many cases). The sections of the Municipal code I could find were related to the old county-issued "special police commission", which has been effectively superceded by the State's shall-issue permit law.

Now, just because there is no de jure registration does not mean that records haven't been kept. Once, prior to the enactment of TICS (Tennessee Instant Check System), local approval paperwork for a handgun purchase was required. Much depended on who was the Chief of Police in Nashville as to the relative ease or difficulty of purchasing a handgun from a dealer in town. It could be done in a matter of hours, if you "walked it through". I usually did so, and was standing in the Metro Nashville PD office where purchases were approved when the lady working there showed me a printout of every handgun I'd purchased from a dealer in Davidson County, several of which I'd sold or traded over the years. I was still the owner of record according to Metro PD. I was not a happy camper.

Nowadays, such record-keeping is prohibited by statute. Do those old records still exist? I'd bet on it.

John, feel free to jump in here & correct me.

David

I guess if you were to buy a gun for cash from your next door neighbor, there would be no record of it. But anyone who purchases a gun from a dealer has to fill out paperwork. You submit thumb prints, and a phone call to the TBI is made on the spot. Your name, date of birth, address, phone number, model of gun, serial number of gun, and driver's license number are given to the TBI and written on the forms.

If that ain't registration, I don't know what is.

Some will tell you all that info is "Purged from the system" after 90 days."

"YEAH.... RIGHT!"

It is required to be purged after 90 days by state law. If those records aren't, though, what recourse is there?

Your dad may be thinking back to the not so good old days of the County Commission.

My dad only had t slip the sheriff a 20 and he became a full fledged gun toting deputy.

I, on the other hand, had to spend days at the Metro Nashville range (loved all the shooting hated the boring classes) and pay hundreds to Metro and the bonding agent.

Metro recorded our firearms supposedly to prove what we had tested with as one of their rules was that you could carry longer barrels than what you tested with but not shorter.

We ALL showed up the Chief Airweights:0

Morg