"Our family has a lifetime history in Memphis and the Memphis that we knew growing up is not the Memphis that it is today. This is an opportunity to give back to our children what we had when we were children. It's the best way I can imagine to spend the last day of school -- the best education they'll get in a long time."

Paige and husband, Rob Crump, their daughter, Avery, 5, and son Robert, 8, of the Balmoral area were among more than three dozen Memphians from neighborhoods across the city who traveled to Nashville Tuesday to support three bills sought by Tennessee's district attorneys, police chiefs and sheriffs to crack down on crime.

Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin participated. He said Mayor Willie Herenton planned to attend but could not arrange a return flight in time for a later event in Memphis.

Two of the bills would increase prison time, without parole and sentence credits, for criminals who commit violent crimes involving a firearm, and for serious felonies involving three or more assailants. The goal is to keep violent, repeat offenders and gang members off the street and in prison. The third bill would add 64 assistant district attorneys and 21 support staffers to prosecutors' offices statewide to speed up prosecutions.

Godwin, the citizens and Shelby County legislators agreed that the rape and assault of a Chickasaw Gardens woman in her home this month galvanized them to act. Many were among the citizens who marched on City Hall last week.

Elizabeth Norman of central Memphis and Stevie Moore of Whitehaven joined Godwin and Nashville Police Chief Ronald Serpass in testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the rally, in support of the "Crooks with Guns" bill. It won the committee's unanimous approval.

All three bills -- which will cost an estimated $57 million a year -- are awaiting action in the Senate and House Finance Committees, where they are tied up in the legislative battle over the state budget among Gov. Phil Bredesen and Democratic and Republican legislative leaders. They were originally estimated at $87 million, mostly in increased costs of incarceration, but the bills' sponsors say the new estimate is still inflated.

State Finance Commissioner Dave Goetz said the Bredesen administration is working with legislators, but funding them all at once will be difficult. House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, said they can be funded if the governor's proposed 40-cents-per-pack cigarette tax increase, which Naifeh supports, is approved.

Moore told the committee that his son, Prentice, 23, was shot dead by a crook with an AK-47 assault rifle outside a Winchester Road nightclub in 2003. "I had to sit there and watch my son lie on the street for three hours, with blood running down the street. Every one of you has children or grandchildren. You don't want to get that call at 3 a.m."

Norman cited the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports showing Tennessee behind only the District of Columbia and South Carolina in the rate of violent crime in 2005, the last year for which statistics have been released. Memphis' metro area tops the state's cities.

"We know there's a fiscal (cost). We know there's over $600 million in the budget. We know the governor is pro-education. So are we," she said. "We just want to communicate strongly from the grassroots and from the people of Tennessee that this has to be the first priority."