Jake Lowary

USA Today Network - Tennessee

NASHVILLE - State Senate Judiciary Committee members on Wednesday began discussions about a revised bill that would punish adult gun owners when their weapons are used by children under 13 and cause injury or death.

The bill, which has been named “McKayla’s Law” by Sen. Sara Kyle, D-Memphis, was originally introduced during the 2016 legislative session, but failed in a House committee. The revised version will be presented during the upcoming 2017 legislative session that begins in January.

Kyle is reintroducing the bill, which has a partner bill in the House sponsored by Rep. Sherry Jones, D-Nashville, but it is already drawing resistance from the Senate committee Republicans, one of whom, Sen. Janice Bowling, R-Tullahoma, said Wednesday “it’s a fine line between public safety and a slippery slope toward gun control.”

Kyle and other proponents say the bill does not attack any Second Amendment rights, but instead adds a layer of accountability to gun ownership.

Beth Joslin Roth, policy director for the Safe Tennessee Project, pointed to a joint investigation by USA Today and the Associated Press that ranked Memphis as the city with the highest rate of accidental gun deaths involving children. Nashville was ranked fourth in the nation.

That investigation found that states across the South have some of the highest per capita rates of accidental gun deaths involving children.

Kyle said Wednesday the version of the bill proposed during the 2016 session was “too broad” and included language that was difficult to define legally.

“This year, we just want to amend the endangerment statute,” Kyle said. “We did this as a public health problem and the amendment as a deterrent.”

The revised version would only apply when injury or death results from the child accessing the gun, Kyle said.

Roth told the Tennessean the revised proposal will “have no impact on a vast majority of responsible gun owners.”

“What we’re saying is if you store your gun in your nightstand and your 6-year-old finds it and shoots somebody with it, then, at that point, you would be held responsible,” she said.

Bowling said the case of Makayla Dyer, 8, of White Pine, wasn’t a fair representation of the issue being discussed. Dyer was shot to death by an 11-year-old boy who got his father’s shotgun from a closet.

“The solution whether there’s actually a deterrent or a slippery slope toward more intervention … we just have to look at it and define what is what,” Bowling said.

Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, called two district attorneys general to testify and asked them if it would be possible to "beef up" the current reckless endangerment law.

D. Michael Dunavant, district attorney general for the 25th Judicial District, said they are “very frustrated” with the current child abuse and neglect statute, which requires harm to be “non-accidental" for charges to be brought.

"It's at least possible that if a child got that gun and shot an killed themselves, there could be a basis for criminally negligent homicide, much the same as when you leave a child restrained in a hot car and (it) dies," Dunavant said.

Reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon is a felony in Tennessee and could apply "under the right facts and circumstances," Dunavant said.

Reach Jake Lowary at 615-881-7039 or on Twitter at @JakeLowary.