On August 30, 2024, the Memphis City Council held a press conference to address the gun referendum (Ordinance No. 5908) passed on July 23, 2024, signed by the chairman on August 6, and by the mayor on August 16. Council members, led by Chairman Smiley, announced that they had filed a lawsuit against the Shelby County Election Commission earlier that day (around 10:20 a.m.) after the commission refused to place the referendum on the ballot without a public vote. The council condemned threats from state officials to withhold sales tax revenue and expressed unity in their fight for gun safety and self-governance.
Oh. Sure. You sure? Wanna get you a chair? I mean to a chair over here. This feels really close. That's right. Does that feel really close? Really? That's three of us in a row right here then. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. I know that we we sent out a press release in the wee hours the morning late at night, particularly addressing the gun referendum that we put on. We were seeking to put on the ballot. But I do want to like thank the members of the community for being here, our staff, um, the other council members and Representative Justin Pearson and members of the media. But I just want to walk down uh some of the facts because there's a many people talking about this particular issue. A lot of them are mistaken or just completely wrong. So on July twenty-third, two thousand and twenty-four, this duly elected body pass referendum ordinance number fifty-nine oh eight on July twenty-third. Thereafter, on August sixth, myself as the chairman of the Memphis City Council signed the ordinance on August sixteenth, the mayor of Memphis signed the ordinance. Shortly thereafter, members of our staff walked it over and profited to the election commission. Generally speaking, the council complied with all laws of the state of Tennessee. What that means is we did everything we're supposed to do. There are some folks talking about this is unconstitutional, but clearly the folks has not read the Constitution itself. But let me just get to the point. Because when we take our titles off, we're just people. And the people of Memphis have been very clear about certain things. If you poll the issues in our communities, they will tell you this. Crime is the number one issue. When they talk about crime, they're talking particularly about gun violence. And when I took a duty to uphold the laws of this state and uphold the laws of the city of Memphis, the duty I take before any of those is to do right by people. And what I know to be true is our communities are suffering with crime. And as elected officials, we have a responsibility to put people in a better position. We are supposed to provide for the general welfare of all people. And we're doing everything in our power to keep people safe. When we do everything in our power to keep people safe, we have we keep running into this hurdle. We keep running into this barrier, talking about well, there's so many guns in our community. Gun crimes are going through the roof. You know, this body elected to increase salaries for police officers because we want our people to be safe. We elected to implement intervention programs because we want our people to be safe. We've done everything in our power, except take guns off the street. I'm not talking about all guns. What we're particularly talking about is guns in the hands of people who don't deserve them. Guns in hands of people who are committing violent crime. And there is some talk about taking money from the city of Memphis if we put something on the ballot. It's strange coming from their group because 40% of our budget goes to law enforcement. And this supposed to be a party who supports law enforcement. Instead, what they're telling the people of Memphis, they want us dead, and they also want us in poverty. Now that's tough. And I just have a hard time dealing or hearing type of radar, they're gonna take money from the city of Memphis. We won't back down, and we damn sure won't be bullied.