As reported yesterday, the Memphis gun control referendums passed by a massive margin. That’s not great news, but the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t matter. They were non-binding referendums and nothing else.

I’m sure local officials wished they’d been more, but they weren’t.

Now, it seems lawmakers are reacting the the outcome, such as it is. FOX13 in Memphis spoke to both state Sen. Brent Taylor and Memphis City Council Chairman J.B. Smiley, Jr., who offered very different takes.

“Those referendums were, again, as meaningless as a nutrition chart on a bag of ice,” Taylor said. “It is all preempted by state law. It was a waste of taxpayer money. And quite frankly, someone ought to sue the City of Memphis, the City Council for dereliction of duty to actually put something that they know facially is illegal and put it before the voters.”

Smiley responded, “We’re also going to put pressure on people who allege they want to Make Memphis Matter to do the right thing by moving Shelby County forward. If you represent Memphis, why don’t you want to listen to the people of Memphis? They told you they want gun reform. They told you they want to protect their families. They want less guns in our community.”

The next step is either a ruling from a judge or legislators passing a state law to permit the local laws to go into effect.

OK, that line about the bag of ice has now been stolen because I literally laughed out loud at that one. The fact that it’s accurate in this case just made it funnier, because yeah, the referendum was about useless.

However, I’m afraid the reporter writing this doesn’t understand what just happened.

It doesn’t matter what a judge or the legislature do, there were no laws to go into effect. The referendum was just about the support of such measures; would folk in Memphis want such a law? It didn’t create any law, even an unenforceable one.

But let’s talk about Smiley’s comment for a moment.

This is a common enough sentiment among the anti-gun folks who genuinely seem to believe that gun control will take care of their violent crime problem. Memphis has a bad one, but Smiley seems to think Memphis’s problem is something the rest of the state should pay for, even though they don’t have anything close to a similar issue. 

The truth is that gun control won’t make them safer. Look at what’s happening in the Toronto area, for example. They have more gun control regulations than would ever be permitted in the United States and they’re seeing a surge in violent crime. It didn’t work.

Just like it hasn’t worked anywhere around here.

I mean, look at what they’re pushing for, for crying out loud. Red flag laws won’t stop the kind of violent crime taking place in Memphis. Further, so-called assault weapons aren’t the issue, either. Nor are law-abiding citizens who are lawfully carrying a firearm under the state’s constitutional carry law. Criminals aren’t allowed to carry guns they can’t even lawfully possess, after all.

This is nothing more than one city really hoping to enforce their will on the rest of the state and trying to use the bodies of innocent murder victims to do it, while also knowing good and well that what they’re pushing for won’t fix their problems.