Domestic Violence & Firearms

The Metro Nashville Office of Family Safety (OFS) works to prevent and respond to gun violence within interpersonal violence. We do this through multiple avenues through our work with clients where we are able to help them plan for safety when a firearm is involved, help them identify the firearm(s) their abuser has for law enforcement, and review firearms abuse cases on our High Risk Intervention Panel (HRIP) multidisciplinary team. We have also worked with partners for several years to create a standard response to DV firearms dispossession throughout our criminal justice system, leading our office to create a DV Firearms Dispossession protocol & to flagging all criminal and civil OP cases for evidence of a firearm to alert court personnel to the danger and dispossession need.

Here are some of the resources we’ve developed on DV & Firearms:

Firearms Safety Plan Tips Consejos para su Plan de Seguridad – Armas de Fuego

Judicial Firearms Dispossession Bench Card

MNPD Firearms & DV Pocket Card

Firearms Identification Form (Handout Version)

DV & Firearms Dispossession Task Force

The Office of Family Safety led Nashville’s DV Firearms Dispossession Taskforce that coordinated interagency policies and procedures to ensure the surrender of firearms owned by defendants convicted of domestic violence or with an active Order of Protection under state and federal law until 2022.

The taskforce created a city -wide dispossession protocol with step-by-step procedures than can ensure firearms surrender is effective. To support the implementation of this protocol, the Office of Family Safety began its Firearms Flagging Program in June 2019 to screen all criminal DV cases, civil OP cases, LAPs, and defendant case histories for evidence of firearms ownership or usage. In 2022, Nashville and Davidson County General Sessions judges committed to holding dispossession status hearings for defendants and OP respondents suspected to have firearms.

DV Firearms Dispossession Task Force Members

Metro Office of Family Safety
Metro Nashville Police Department, Domestic Violence Division
Metro Nashville District Attorney’s Office
Metro Nashville Criminal Court Clerk’s Office
General Sessions, Circuit Court, and Criminal Court judges
Davidson County Sheriff’s Office
General Sessions Probation
TN State Probation and Parole
US Attorney General’s Office