Tennessee stiffened the penalty for stealing a gun. Amid a theft crisis, is the law working?

Around 2:30 a.m. in March 2022, a group of young men smashed the window of an unmarked police car parked outside of the officer’s Nashville home and took his department-issued Glock pistol, ammunition and two personal guns all locked in a case in the trunk.

They even stole his set of spike strips.

The officer, Det. Randall Smith with the Metro Nashville Police Department, had arrived home from a late shift around 1 a.m. that morning and said he left the guns secured in his trunk since he had to be back at work in a few hours for a 6 a.m. training, according to police records.

In most cases, guns stolen from cars are tough to track down until they turn up months or years later when they’re used in a crime.

But in this case, officers were able to catch some of the suspects later that day thanks to surveillance videos that showed a rash of car break-ins in the neighborhood. Police recovered Smith’s Glock magazine and one of his personal guns, according to an arrest affidavit.

Police arrested another suspect the next day after the man was spotted on a live social media post holding the officer’s short barrel rifle.

Smith was given a one-day suspension for violating protocol, records show. His supervising sergeant noted that he should have stored the guns inside his home while off duty.

Those guns were just a few of the more than 1,300 stolen from cars in Davidson County last year, in a statewide epidemic that has skyrocketed in the past decade.

The problem is so alarming that law enforcement sends out regular news alerts with the latest stolen guns statistics and reminders for people to lock their car doors and secure their firearms. This month, Nashville police began offering free gun locks to all residents.

But gun control advocates say the pleas have done little to curb the crisis.

In a push to deter criminals, the state in 2021 passed a law strengthening the penalty for stealing a gun from a misdemeanor to a Class E felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of six months in jail.

The law was part of a legislative package that year that made Tennessee a permitless carry state, and it was added to appease concerns that allowing people to carry handguns without a permit could lead to more crime.

Gov. Bill Lee even included an extra $17 million in the state General Fund that fiscal year for an anticipated jump in incarceration rates.

But while the effort was meant to address crime and stiffen penalties, attorneys who spoke with The Tennessean said the new law actually makes the cases harder to prosecute.

To begin with, it’s a tough crime to prove.

A stolen gun can change hands multiple times before it’s recovered, and witnesses and the gun owners can be hard to track down or reluctant to testify.

Under the new penalty, defense attorneys have little bargaining room with the six month mandatory jail time and are less likely to settle a case.

As a result, most felony gun theft charges are dropped.

The Tennessean reviewed more than a 100 Davidson County court cases from 2022 through May 2023, after the law went into effect, and found that the vast majority of gun theft charges were eventually dropped or dismissed, mostly due to lack of proof and witnesses.

In most cases, defendants will end up being convicted on other criminal charges since most of them are committing other crimes along with the gun theft.

But the dropped charges show how a law that was meant to bring change in reality does little once it hits the court system, said David Raybin, a longtime local criminal defense lawyer.

“The dynamic has changed because now the sanction is so severe on a mandatory minimum case that’s already very hard to prove,” he said. “It’s the same philosophy that if we make the penalties harder it’s going to end the crime, and that’s absurd.”

As for the young men accused of stealing guns from the police car in 2022, three of the defendants, all 21 years old, were allowed to plead guilty to the lesser offense of property theft, according to the Davidson County District Attorney's Office. The case against a fourth man is pending.

As Tennessee grapples with the massive problem, lawmakers in a special session this month are hoping to pass some type of bill that would provide a deterrent for people leaving unlocked guns in cars.

Lee is proposing doing away with taxes on firearm safes and safety devices, providing free gun locks, expanding safe storage training in state-approved safety courses and launching a safe-storage public service campaign.

But the perimeters Lee set for the special session on Wednesday specifically prevent lawmakers from passing any penalties for those who fail to safely store their firearms.

The epidemic

In 2013, Tennessee passed what’s known as the “gun in trunks” law, which allowed people to keep guns in their vehicles if they’re locked and secured.

Since that time, the number of stolen guns from cars in Nashville has jumped nearly tenfold, from 206 in 2013 to a record 1,378 last year.

And Nashville looks to be on track for another record year, with more than 700 guns stolen from cars so far this year, marking 80% of all stolen firearms.

The problem is just as bad in Memphis and Chattanooga.

An analysis by the gun control advocacy group Everytown listed the cities as the top two in the nation for stolen guns from cars in 2020.

In fact, Tennessee that year had the unfortunate honor of being the only state to have four cities — Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga and Jackson — in the top 15.

Republican lawmakers have said they do not see a correlation between the change in the law and the spike in gun theft, instead attributing it to a rise in juvenile crime and gang activity.

While law enforcement acknowledges that youth stealing guns from cars is a major concern, there’s also the problem of people haphazardly forgetting to lock their cars and secure their weapons.

In many cases, teens will wander through a neighborhood in groups checking for unlocked cars, said Davidson County Deputy District Attorney Roger Moore.

“If they find a gun, they’ll keep it for a few days and then sell it off, which makes it harder to prove who stole it,” he said.

It even happened to Memphis Police Chief "C.J." Davis last year when two 17-year-olds were arrested for stealing her department-issued gun from a car parked outside of a home supplies store.

The car was locked and her gun was stored in a lockbox under the seat, but Davis later apologized and acknowledged that it was out of protocol since the lockbox was not secured to the car.

The epidemic was further highlighted this year when Metro Nashville Police Officer Donovan Coble was shot with a stolen gun near Donelson Pike.

The suspect, 37-year-old Delama Casmir, who died in the shooting, allegedly stole the gun from an SUV left in an airport parking lot, according to police. The SUV’s owner, a man from Russellville, Kentucky, said he had left his wife’s pistol in the center console.

Coble survived and was expected to make a full recovery.

A tough case to prove

As Tennessee’s stolen gun numbers climbed, officials were hopeful that the new law strengthening the penalty from a misdemeanor to felony would help curb the crime, and the burden shifted to prosecutors for enforcement.

But it was a different story once the law reached the court system, Davidson County Court records show.

Of 61 felony gun theft cases adjudicated in General Sessions Court from from 2022 through May 2023, all of them were dropped, dismissed or retired, mostly due to lack of proof.

The majority of more than 60 gun theft cases in criminal court were also dropped or dismissed.

“The more severe the punishment for any offense, the less likely it is for a defendant to want to plead guilty,” said Moore, with the district attorney’s office.

Assistant District Attorney Emily Todoran, a general sessions court team leader for Davidson County, said the challenge is proving the crime beyond a reasonable doubt when in many cases they can’t even locate the gun owners.

“They won’t show up in court or we don’t know who the victims are,” she said. “We hardly ever have the proof we need. If I could prove them, I would.”

Defendants in most cases end up being convicted of other charges, like drugs or being a felon in possession of a weapon, since many defendants have criminal records, she said.

Federal prosecutors sometimes take on the cases if the defendant has a lengthy record, she added.

It’s unclear how the cases are being handled in other counties. A handful of other counties reviewed by The Tennesean didn’t yet have a specific category for felony gun theft and don’t track the cases. The cases instead are lumped in with general theft.

Hamilton County District Attorney Coty Wamp in Chattanooga said her office doesn't specifically keep data on felony gun theft charges, but it is prosecuting the cases.

Wamp said she believes the law with its stricter penalties does act as a deterrent for criminals, and it’s a better solution over possibly penalizing gun owners who irresponsibility leave guns in cars.

“I wouldn’t criminalize the victim of a crime, because then you don’t have a victim,” she said.

However, stolen guns remain a major problem in Chattanooga. This month, Wamp put her face on a series of billboards, reminding people not to leave their firearms in their cars.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, who sponsored the bill that changed the law, said increasing the penalties recognizes the seriousness of the crime.

"An inconvenient truth is that criminals don’t obey laws; gun theft leads to more crime," Lamberth, a former prosecutor, said in a statement. "If we need to impose harsher penalties for gun theft, that is something I would consider."

New legislation

While some officials, like Wamp, want to move away from penalizing gun owners, others see it as key in fighting the problem.

Earlier this year, Rep. Caleb Hemmer, D-Nashville, introduced a bill that would have made it a misdemeanor for gun owners to improperly store guns in a car or boat. As punishment, offenders would be required to enroll in a court-approved firearm safety course — a decidedly lighter penalty in a state that largely supports gun ownership.

Lawmakers ended their session without considering the bill, but Hemmer said he’s hoping to reintroduce similar legislation when they convene this month in a special session. However, he's facing an uphill battle as Lee on Wednesday said he is blocking any legislation that would penalize people for carelessly leaving guns in cars.

Hemmer said he still plans to propose some type of bill that will address the issue. His original bill had bipartisan support and backing from major police groups, including Nashville Police Chief John Drake.

"It's disappointing and frustrating because there should be penalties," he said. "But I'm resolute and ready to push forward with some common sense solutions for this epically bad problem in Tennessee."

Guns have been a top concern in the state this year following the March 27 mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School that left six people dead, including three children.

As for the current law, Linda McFadyen-Ketchum, a volunteer with the gun control group Moms Demand Action Tennessee, said the harsher penalty for a stolen gun isn’t effective if people don’t get jail time.

“And I’m not a great proponent of jail time, but the jail time and pushing it to a felony was sort of a concession when permitless carry was passed,” she said. “It was supposed to be the governor’s take to get a handle on guns stolen from cars, and it doesn’t appear to be working.”

Reach Kelly Puente at kpuente@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee stiffened the penalty for stealing a gun. Is the law working?