You see, the courts sided with Memphis.

A gun control ballot initiative is back on Shelby County Nov. 5 ballot after Shelby County Chancellor Melanie Taylor Jefferson ruled in favor of the Memphis City Council, according to several media reports.

The ballot questions, which would be unbinding, have been the subject of debate and legal issues over the past several weeks.

The ballot questions ask about preventing individuals from carrying a handgun without a permit, banning the sale or possession of “assault rifles” in most cases with some exceptions and the addition of extreme risk protection orders, often referred to as red flag laws.

Yet it's vital to remember that the referendum is non-binding. It can't be binding, in fact. It's just a glorified taxpayer-funded poll that doesn't really even really a good test of what people in Memphis really think, only what people who show up on that particular day happen to think.

There are a lot of pro-gun people who won't even bother to vote because they know their votes won't matter. It's a terrible way to view it, especially considering it's a presidential election, but since Trump is going to take Tennessee no matter what happens in Memphis, I can see it.

That's why no one should lose a moment of sleep over this. Yes, the pro-gun forces lost in court on this one, but so what? All that was determined was that they could have a vote on whether they should do something they literally could not do.

Preemption wasn't on the docket in court, after all, and Tennessee still has it on the books. Memphis can get people's opinions all they want, even via the ballot, but they can't act on the results should the public say they want it.

Earlier this week, I argued that state officials were taking the wrong approach to this whole thing. See, what I think they should be doing is rather than just focus on stopping the referendum, they should at least considering going after Memphis officials for trying to kick the blame onto guns rather than their own inability to address the rampant crime in their city.

They could go on the offensive with that while still trying to block the referendum, especially since it's nothing more than an attempt to use taxpayer money to advance an anti-gun agenda.

Now, blocking it is off the table.

That means state officials either have to ignore it, which isn't the most terrible idea going forward, or they can go on the attack. They can point out the systemic failures in Memphis that simply don't exist in so many other parts of the state, and that if it was just a lack of gun control, well, why is the rest of the state nice and peaceful? They can go after soft-on-crime policies or whatever else might be amiss in Memphis.

Sitting back and just letting officials pretend they're not at fault to any degree, even from the standpoint of being clueless as to how to address crime, just allows them to pretend to be the righteous ones. I wouldn't let that happen. I'd make it a point to trot out every single policy officials there have backed that contributed to the problem. I'd point and say, "See? They're pushing gun control to hide their own mistakes."

For a lot of people there, it won't matter. 

For a lot of others, though, it will.