The bill, which was recently (February 3, 2008) Geek-Announced here, was introduced in both the State Senate (SB3395, which is summarized here) and House (HB3245).
On April 2, 2008, the House took action on HB3245; specifically, as interpreted by the NRA:
House Bill 3245, sponsored by State Representative Larry Miller (D-88), was defeated when it was withdrawn from the House Judiciary Criminal Practice and Procedure Sub-Committee on Wednesday, April 2. HB3245 would have require all handgun ammunition manufactured or sold in Tennessee to be coded with a serial number, and entered into a statewide database at the time of sale. Encoded ammunition would be registered to the purchaser and would include the date of transaction, the purchaser’s name, date of birth, driver’s license number, and the serial number of the ammunition. Its companion bill, Senate Bill 3395, sponsored by State Senator Reginald Tate (D-33) has seen no action in the Senate Judiciary Committee since January 23.I'm assuming that the Senate Bill is toothless, without a vote for financing from the House.
Personally, I find this heartening ... if not surprising. It's difficult to imagine that the fine residents of Tennessee would allow this kind of repressive end-run on the Second Amendment to be considered without significant negative feed-back from an irate citizenry.
Still, it's worth paying close attention to other state legislatures which have proposed Encoded Ammunition bills. These bills have not received, in the most part, significant publicity from the Main-Stream Media or, for that matter, from the NRA. While the MSM is generally not inclined to serve their readers by announcing this kind of legislation, and the NRA has so many other gun-rights issues which it (apparently) considers 'more important', we would best serve our own interests by being aware of these bills and actively opposing them at the grassroots level ... a level to which the NRA gives lip-service, but not always timely and active support.
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