Missouri Republicans block proposed ban on kids carrying guns in public

The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have banned children from being able to openly carry firearms on public land without adult supervision.

The proposal, which was part of a long debate in the chamber on how to fight crime in St. Louis, was soundly defeated by a vote of 104-39, with just one Republican voting in support of the ban. After the amendment on the open-carry restrictions for minors was initially supported by the Republican legislator sponsoring a broader crime bill, GOP lawmakers on a committee that he leads removed the firearms provision last week.

“Every time we talked about the provision related to guns, we knew that was going to be difficult on our side of the aisle,” state Rep. Lane Roberts (R) said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

State Rep. Donna Baringer (D), who represents St. Louis and sponsored the amendment to H.B. 301, said she brought the proposal to the chamber after police in her district requested tighter regulations to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”

“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them,” Baringer said. “Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.”

While critics and Democrats denounced Republican lawmakers for defeating the proposal, some GOP lawmakers, such as state Rep. Tony Lovasco, defended the decision.

“Government should prohibit acts that directly cause measurable harm to others, not activities we simply suspect might escalate,” Lovasco, who represents the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon, told The Washington Post in a statement. “Few would support banning unaccompanied kids in public places, yet one could argue such a bad policy might be effective. While it’s reasonable to be wary of minors’ carrying guns, any solution to juvenile crime needs to be crafted properly and respectful of individual rights.”

Roberts and Baringer did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Thursday.

The defeat of the proposal comes at a time when gun-control activists are worried about the aftershocks from last year’s Supreme Court decision that the Second Amendment generally protects the rights of law-abiding Americans to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. After the ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen led to easier access to concealed-carry permits nationwide, states such as California saw spikes in permit applications and uncertainty from local officials about how to proceed.

Since 2017, Missouri residents have not been required to have a permit for concealed carry, after lawmakers in the Missouri House voted to override a veto by then-Gov. Jay Nixon (D) of a broad gun-rights bill. The law does not require gun owners to take safety training or have a criminal-background check to carry concealed firearms in most public places. The move was celebrated by Republicans, but law enforcement officials warned that the law was “going to make officers a lot more apprehensive,” St. Louis Public Radio reported at the time.

The proposal’s defeat this week comes almost a month after Missouri Republicans in the state House made news for a voting to tighten the dress code for women legislators, while leaving the men’s dress code alone. Missouri House Republicans sought to require women to wear a blazer when in the chamber. The state House eventually approved a modified version of the proposal, which allows for cardigans as well as jackets but still requires women’s arms to be concealed.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers were initially optimistic that they could agree on restrictions surrounding children and open-carry after a bipartisan group in the chamber proposed the limits last month. Roberts, who represents part of Jasper and Newton counties, told the state’s House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee last week that while he did not want to diminish the Second Amendment, letting children openly carry firearms in public places “is not what the Second Amendment is about.”

“This is about people who don’t have the life experience to make a decision about the consequences of having that gun in their possession,” Roberts said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Why is an 8-year-old carrying a sidearm in the street?”

But Roberts’s sentiment was not supported by his GOP colleagues on the House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee, who removed the provision.

“I just have a different approach for addressing public safety that doesn’t deprive people, who have done nothing to any other person, who will commit no violence, from their freedom,” Republican state Rep. Bill Hardwick, who represents Pulaski County and Fort Leonard Wood, told the Post-Dispatch.

Critics noted how quickly the momentum shifted on the proposal.

“I am old enough to remember when Missouri Republicans were pretending to care about gun violence in St. Louis. Like, 2 days ago,” Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger tweeted on Friday. “That was short-lived.”

On Wednesday, Baringer offered an amendment to try to add the provision back into the broader crime bill that was being voted on by the chamber, but it was overwhelmingly voted down.

The vote was met with blowback from Democrats and gun-control advocates. Among those was Shannon Watts, founder of the gun violence prevention nonprofit Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “Republicans can’t claim to be tough on crime when they’re soft on guns,” she wrote on Twitter.

State Rep. Peter Merideth (D) argued that the state cares more about drag shows than children openly carrying guns. One bill currently proposed in Missouri notes that it wants to change “the definition of a sexually oriented business to include any nightclub or bar that provides drag performances.” Another proposed bill would categorize drag performances on public property or viewed by minors as class A misdemeanors.

“Kids carrying guns on the street or in a park is a matter of individual freedom and personal responsibility. Kids seeing a drag queen read a children’s book or sing a song is a danger the government must ban,” wrote Merideth, who represents St. Louis. “Do I have that right MO GOP?”

Jessica Piper, a political podcast host and former Democratic candidate for the Missouri House, summed up her reaction to children being allowed to openly carry guns in public places without adult supervision: “Another day in Missouri.”

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Scott Wilson and Todd C. Frankel contributed to this report.