A Tennessee legislative committee advanced Rep. Shaundelle Brooks’ bill that would criminalize knowingly giving firearms to someone who recently received inpatient mental health treatment. Brooks named the bill Akilah's Law in honor of her son Akilah Dasilva, who was one of four killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville Waffle House in 2018. Brooks has been lobbying for tighter gun restrictions ever since, and won her seat last November on a platform of gun safety advocacy, reports the Tennessee Lookout. Travis Reinking of Morton, Ill., was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2022 for killing four people and injuring four others at the restaurant with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Illinois State Police had revoked Reinking’s firearms owner’s identification card before the shooting, requiring Reinking to surrender his guns to his father, Jeffrey Reinking returned the guns to his son, including the assault rifle used in the Waffle House shooting — an illegal act in Illinois. The elder Reinking was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
In Tennessee, giving firearms to juveniles or people who are intoxicated are misdemeanors. Tennessee has no law against giving firearms to someone who has been committed for mental health evaluation. Jan Norman prosecuted Travis Reinking for the Waffle House homicides. She remembers talking with Brooks about the Illinois law. "I said, ‘Shaundelle, it’s not enough. It’s not. The punishment is not enough.' But thank God he gave him those guns in Illinois, because if that would have happened here in Tennessee, I couldn’t have done a thing about it. He wouldn’t have been punished at all if it happened in Tennessee,” Norman said. Brooks’ bill would criminalize the sale, offer of sale, delivery or transfer of a firearm to a person while knowing that the person has been a patient of a mental health institution – voluntarily or involuntarily – within the previous five years. It does not apply to people who were voluntarily admitted for treatment solely for alcohol abuse disorder who have no other secondary mental illnesses or substance abuse disorders.
Comentarios