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TITANS’ ROSTER
SEPTEMBER 5, 2024 | VOLUME 36 | NUMBER 35
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Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell discusses transit issues in Green Hills, Southwest Nashville
Walkability, traffic calming measures among planned solutions NICOLLE S. PRAINO
Crowds rally against gun violence at the state Capitol, April 2023
PHOTO: HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS
Hemmer and Yarbro preview safe-storage bill Tens of thousands of guns have been stolen from cars in Tennessee over the past decade HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS
Nashville Democrats Rep. Caleb Hemmer (House District 59) and Sen. Jeff Yarbro (Senate District 21) are set to introduce a new safe-gun-storage bill in the next year’s state legislative session. Gun safety has been a continued focus for the two lawmakers. Earlier this year, the pair introduced HB 1667/SB 1695, which would have allowed large cities and municipalities in Tennessee to regulate the safe storage of guns left in unattended cars. That bill failed to even make it to a floor vote in Tennessee’s Republican-supermajority General Assembly. Yarbro and Hemmer held a joint press
conference Wednesday in Nashville’s Cordell Hull State Office Building, where they said they are still “fine-tweaking” the legislation, which has not yet been filed. The new bill resembles previous attempts at ensuring safe storage of guns in motor vehicles. If passed, the legislation could see citizens who fail to secure guns in their vehicles sent to courtordered training classes that promote safe storage of firearms. “We’re not trying to punish people who are not breaking the law, except for this storage provision,” Yarbro said. “We’re trying to get them to be responsible, law-abiding
gun owners.” Hemmer spoke of his own personal experience as a student at Nashville’s John Trotwood Moore Middle School. In 1994, an accidental shooting at the school claimed the life of 13-year-old Terrance Murray — the first, and still the only, instance of fatal gun violence in a Metro Nashville public school. (A deadly Nashville shooting last year that claimed the lives of three students and three teachers took place at the Covenant School, which is a private school.) The gun that killed Murray, accidentally fired by a >> PAGE 2 13-year-old classmate, made
Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell wants everyone to know that there is something for them in the transportation improvement plan. The News sat down with O’Connell to discuss transit issues in Green Hills and other Southwest Nashville areas. One thing O’Connell noted, having grown up in the area, is that modernizing traffic signals will give significant advantages to drivers. “When I was on Metro Council, Russ Pulley led an important effort to try to streamline that gateway to Green Hills so that you don’t have these segmented streets that are offset from one another but instead have intersection alignment,” O’Connell said. “It’s a big infrastructure project, but this program actually will support that intersection alignment being safer, whether or not you’re coming into Green Hills by car, but that whole corridor from I-440 coming in from the north or coming up Hillsboro road from the south or any other cross streets like Harding.” O’Connell said drivers should feel like the overall percentage of green lights they hit will be increased to help relieve some of the traffic pain points such as those at Bowling Avenue and Woodmont Avenue or along Hillsboro Pike or Harding Pike. “There are just going to be >> PAGE 2
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