Stolen, illegal guns fuel shootings in Memphis
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Memphis Police say they’re seeing more guns on the street than ever before, and far too many are in the wrong hands.
One victim’s family says the consequences are heartbreaking.
Earnestine Mims said her sister Tina was sitting on her bed watching television in her home on Randle Street one night in June, when a stray bullet came through the window.
It struck Tina Mims under her eye. Thankfully, she survived.
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Earnestine Mims, who lives in Chicago, was shocked to hear what happened to her little sister.
“They have magnum guns that can shot 100 bullets in a few minutes, few seconds. They don’t care. They don’t have no fear,” she said.
Memphis police responded to a shooting a few blocks over that night. It’s unclear if that’s where the stray bullet came from. No arrests have been made.
Officers were back in the same area three weeks later for another shooting and a homicide.
An ’emerging threat’
“In 2023, we had over 1,100 shooting incidents,” Memphis Police Deputy Chief Don Crowe said. “Our officers are going out there every day knowing that they are going to encounter armed people.”
Often times, those armed people have suddenly opened fire. In recent months, several people who were breaking into cars fired shots back at witnesses when confronted.
Tattoo shop owner shot after attempted car theft on Cooper Street
While there were fewer reports of stolen guns last year, we found out 13,981 firearms were reported stolen in Memphis in the past four years. More than half were taken from cars, according to MPD.
During that same time, MPD recovered more than 20,000 illegally possessed guns.
Crowe showed us some of the guns officers recently recovered. He said one was found with drugs in a stolen car.
“It’s got a laser on it to assist the aiming in that weapon,” he said.
Crowe said another stolen Glock they found was in a car they stopped doing donuts and recklessly driving in a parking lot. It had a highly dangerous machine conversion device attached.
That device is known as a switch. It’s illegal under federal law and turns the firearm into a machine gun.
MPD says they are finding the devices more and more. Last month, they found one during an attempted auto theft downtown and four more during a search warrant.
Law enforcement recently demonstrated what they called an “emerging threat” to show us how many shots are fired with one pull.
“We have seen a lot of that in the past year or two. An uptick in that,” said Ryan Todd, the acting special agent in charge of the ATF’s Memphis field office.
He said they’re being made with 3-D printers or bought on the dark web. His team is working around the clock to get the off the streets and stop the gun violence.
A key tool they’re using is NIBIN, which stands for the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network.
“A firearm has a unique characteristic. No firearm is the same. It’s like a fingerprint,” he explained.
Todd said after a shooting occurs, investigators will collect shell casings and then place them into a machine to get a high definition image.
“Once that is put into the system, NIBIN searches for any match, connection or correlation,” he said.
If it matches shell casings used in other crimes, it will spit out a report for the detective. Todd showed us an example of what a report looks like.
A map of the gun’s history listing other crimes the gun is connected to, where and when they happened and any suspect information. Todd said it’s a “crucial” tool that generates leads more quickly — which means quicker arrests. The more crimes they can nab someone on, the stronger the sentence.
But while many agree that’s one part of combating gun violence, they say prevention and intervention is just as important.
‘It’s everybody’s problem’
“If you look at an infectious disease map and a poverty map and violence map, all the clusters look alike,” Heal 901 founder K. Durrell Cowan said.
He launched a gun violence intervention program. He says violence interrupters detect conflict and stop retaliation, and then their outreach workers offer support and services.
He said the work goes beyond the high-risk individual.
“We have to do whole family healing. If this child is out selling candy because there’s a need, that means that mom has a need. Not the child. Who’s helping mom with her need?” Cowan explained.
That could be a job, mental health or addiction treatment.
“The work I do comes in qualitative. It’s life changing work,” he said.
Cowan says he’s paying for the program out of pocket. The county helped fund the pilot program, but the money ran out in June, despite success stories and despite the crime commission crediting programs like his for slowing the pace of major violent crime.
“It’s everybody’s problem, and it’s not going to be solved until everyone is working together,” Crowe said.
By everyone, he means police, the public and policy makers. Since Tennessee became a permitless carry state in 2021, Crowe said it’s been harder for officers to stop someone who may be illegally possessing a gun or take action, like when a man walked through Midtown in November with an assault-style rifle.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young said he’s working to find a middle ground with state leaders, to see “whether we can identify districts or even whole cities like the city of Memphis where we could have more restrictions placed on the guns,” he said.
As for Mims, her sister said she is now unable to see in one eye. Her medical bills are overwhelming. Despite not having the money, she moved out of the home because she no longer felt safe.
“They got more powerful stuff than the police and that’s a sad thing,” Earnestine Mims said. “It breaks my heart.”
Want to help Mims and Heal 901’s efforts?
The family set up a Go Fund Me for Mims to help with medical bills and a new home. Click here if you want to help.
If you want to find out more about Heal 901 and how you can help, click here.
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