KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After an abbreviated week of floor activity at the Missouri Capitol, since many lawmakers wanted to be in Kansas City for the Chiefs' Super Bowl victory parade, those same lawmakers are returning to the General Assembly with far different ideas about what Wednesday's fatal shooting and melee that injured 22 people at the event should mean for public policy debates.
On Friday, two juveniles were charged in Jackson County Family Court with resisting arrest and unspecified gun charges. Those proceedings are sealed because of the suspects' ages, and police have so far not revealed information about the weapons involved or whether the suspects were previously known to law enforcement.
Missouri has some of the most expansive gun rights among states as a result of a series of measures passed by the Republican-led Legislature over the past few decades.
Before the GOP won complete control of the Legislature in the 2002 elections, concealed weapons were outlawed and handguns could be purchased only after a background check and permit from local sheriffs. Republican lawmakers repealed those restrictions within their first decade of power, and gun shops saw rising sales.
Missouri currently has no age restrictions on gun use and possession, although federal law broadly prohibits minors from carrying handguns.
Voters fortified gun rights in 2014, approving a constitutional amendment placed on the ballot by lawmakers making the right to bear arms "unalienable" and subjecting any restrictions "to strict scrutiny."
Two years later, the Republican supermajority in Missouri's Legislature overrode a veto of then-Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, allowed most adults to carry concealed guns without needing a permit. The legislation also created a "stand-your-ground" right, expanding the legal use of guns in self-defense.
House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, of suburban Kansas City, who will become the next Speaker of the House in the event the GOP keeps control of the chamber in November's elections, said Friday in a statement that lawmakers should "of course look at public policies that allowed the shooting to happen; that includes guns."
"But we should also look at what policies contributed to two teenagers taking guns to a parade and ruining their lives while harming and killing others in broad daylight," Patterson said. "I think if we did that, we'd see that this is a much bigger problem than just gun laws."
The Kansas City Star reported Friday that Patterson will not move on a pair of gun bills that have come up before and did again this year—one that would allow for open carry in places of worship and public transportation and another that would exempt sales tax on purchases of firearms and ammunition.
That surprised many GOP lawmakers who gathered in Kansas City for the party's annual Lincoln Days, which brought together candidates and party activists at the Airport Hilton.
"I would personally prefer that those bills do continue to move forward in the process. Not having heard his comment that's news to me but I'm supportive of both of those issues so would hate to see them be stopped in the process this early in the process," said House Budget Chair Cody Smith, a Republican from Carthage and also a candidate for State Treasurer told Spectrum News in an interview.
State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican running for Missouri's third congressional district seat, is the author of a Senate bill that would also allow for more freedom to carry weapons in places currently prohibited, including churches and bus terminals.
"We don't know all the facts about the terrible shooting that happened on Wednesday. We do not know what laws specifically were broken as those indictments are sealed because they were juveniles that were involved, but it is already illegal to carry guns in a gun-free zone," Coleman said.
"The problem isn't that the bad guys are not following the law; it's that we want to make sure that the good guys also have access because all of these types of laws just disarm the good guys instead of the bad guys," she said.
At a Monday afternoon news conference, Missouri House Democrats said they plan to introduce a resolution that would if placed before voters and approved by a statewide vote, would allow local municipalities like Kansas City and St. Louis to pass their own local gun laws. House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, D-Springfield, acknowledged that the resolutions were unlikely to move in the GOP-controlled House and Senate, but hoped it would amplify a similar measure proposed for an initiative petition campaign by the group known as "Sensible Missouri". One of the chief advocates for Sensible Missouri's proposals was the late UMSL professor Richard Rosenfeld, who died last month.
Prior to his death, Rosenfeld told Spectrum News that Sensible Missouri's work was being put on hold after backers saw early polling data. It is unclear if the group has petitions in the field getting signed or not. The deadline to submit signatures to get a question on the ballot in 2024 is May 5.
plan a Monday afternoon news conference outside the Capitol to call for what they describe as "common sense" safety legislation. Many, if not all, of the bills introduced by Democrats related to firearms have not been referred to a committee for a hearing.
The Associated Press contributed information for this story