A 5-year-old boy is dead after a shooting on Bison Court in Nashville, and homicide detectives are still working to determine whether the child accidentally shot himself. Officers responded to the scene just after 5 p.m. Friday on reports of a shooting involving a juvenile, and the child was rushed to a hospital, where he later died.
According to WSMV, the Metro Nashville Police Department said detectives are working to determine whether the boy accidentally shot himself. The investigation remains ongoing, and police have released no other details about how the child came into contact with the firearm or who owned it.
A Familiar and Preventable Pattern in Middle Tennessee
This is not the first time Metro Nashville Police have investigated a young child gaining access to an unsecured firearm inside a home. In June 2025, a nearly 3-year-old child was critically injured after finding an unsecured gun inside a residence and shooting themselves, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. Following that shooting, police reminded gun owners that free cable gun locks are available at department headquarters, all eight police precincts, and the Records Division public counter in Madison.
Research from Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital found that 85 percent of firearm fatalities among children aged 12 and younger occur inside the home, according to a study published in Injury Prevention. Vanderbilt operates Middle Tennessee's primary Level I pediatric trauma center, making it a frequent destination for children injured in these incidents.
Tennessee's Legal Gaps and a Grim National Ranking
Tennessee law does not require gun owners to lock up or safely store firearms inside homes with minors. Under T.C.A. § 39-17-1320, adults can be criminally liable for recklessly providing a handgun to a juvenile when they know of a risk of felony misuse, but that statute targets deliberate transfer rather than careless storage, according to the Giffords Law Center.
State lawmakers have repeatedly tried to close that gap with what is known as MaKayla's Law, filed again this session as HB 167 and SB 33. The bill, named for 8-year-old Makayla Dyer, who was fatally shot by an 11-year-old neighbor in 2015, would create Class C or Class E felony penalties for adults who fail to secure a gun that a child under 13 accesses and uses to cause injury or death, per LegiScan records. The legislation has repeatedly stalled amid resistance to mandatory safe-storage penalties.
The stakes of that debate are stark. Everytown for Gun Safety found that Tennessee recorded 158 unintentional shootings involving children between 2015 and 2023, the third-highest total of any state behind only Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the Everytown Support Fund. Nationwide, preschoolers aged 5 and younger accounted for nearly one in three unintentional child shootings between 2015 and 2022, per Everytown Research, and that same analysis found unintentional shooting rates were 34 percent lower in states with safe-storage laws on the books.
How This Death Fits a Broader Statewide Toll
A statewide study published in Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open and reviewed by the National Institutes of Health identified 36 accidental deaths among 636 Tennessee child firearm deaths between 2012 and 2022, with homicides and suicides making up the vast majority of the remainder. That joint research from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Meharry Medical College, cited by PMC, also found that nearly half of all child gun deaths in the state occurred outside of hospitals. The Sycamore Institute has separately reported that firearm injuries are the leading cause of death among Tennessee children and teenagers aged 1 to 18, with state review data showing that nearly half of reviewed childhood fatalities were preventable.
The Friday shooting also lands just days after Hoodline reported on a case in Shelby County, where a father now faces homicide charges after his 5-year-old son fatally shot himself with a loaded handgun left unsecured on a bed. That death occurred just days before a second fatal accidental shooting involving a 5-year-old in Memphis. Whether Nashville investigators will pursue similar charges against an adult connected to the Bison Court shooting, and exactly how the firearm was stored, remain open questions as detectives continue their work.
