ST. LOUIS — Two weeks after the mass shooting in Kansas City that left 22 people injured and a mother of two dead, another shooting claimed the lives of an officer and a civil process server. Since those deaths, lawmakers in the Missouri Legislature have renewed their focus on the state's gun laws.
Missouri has some of the loosest gun laws in the United States. The state does not require permits to purchase or carry, and it does not require firearms to be registered or for gun owners to be licensed. For years, lawmakers have struggled to find bipartisan solutions to gun violence in the state.
While some Republicans say the focus on gun policy is a knee-jerk reaction, state Democrats argue it's common sense.
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In Missouri, violent crime dropped slightly in 2023, but the vast majority of incidents involved guns. Firearm crimes, as reported by police in both St. Louis and Kansas City, went up from 2022 to 2023. Last year, nearly 500 people in the state died as a result of a firearm-related crime.
These acts of violence have sparked a fresh round of calls to act, including a quick and rare bipartisan effort to ban celebratory gunfire, though that issue was not a factor in the shooting that followed the Kansas City Super Bowl parade.
Last year, survivors of a St. Louis-area school shooting called on lawmakers to act. State Democrats proposed so-called "red flag" laws as well as raising the minimum age for firearm purchases, but both failed.
Still, there might be new opportunity this year, said Leila Sadat, international criminal law professor at Washington University.
"We've all felt that it was hopeless for so long," said Sadat, who also leads a project on gun violence and human rights at the university. "Sandy Hook didn't change anything, Columbine didn't change anything, Parkland didn't change anything. Would it ever change? And I think actually we are seeing a subtle shift, mostly because the gun deaths are so high now."
What the Legislature has done about guns
So far this session, more than 35 bills with language around firearms have been filed in the state house by both parties.
Democrat state House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a gun owner who grew up in rural Missouri, said it's "almost impossible" to get support for gun legislation in the Legislature.
"Politics gets in the way of keeping our community safe when it comes to the Republican supermajority here in Missouri," she said, and "law enforcement asks us for help and the Republicans who are in charge here say, 'No, now is not the time.'"
Officials said 800 members of law enforcement were on the scene when the Kansas City shooting began. Nearly half of the people shot that day were children.
Quade was among those attending the parade when shots rang out. She said she was in the bathroom when a man entered to warn everyone inside that there was an active shooter — a moment she said was "absolutely terrifying."
"I, along with a few other adults, put the kids behind us and piled them in a corner and stood in front of them until we had the [all-]clear that we could leave the bathroom," she said, recalling the chaos of people running and children crying to be reunited with their parents.
"It's something that obviously any survivor of a mass shooting will say that I'll relive that for a very, very long time, if not forever," she said.
Just days after the shooting, the Republican-led House passed a ban on celebratory gunfire in a rare bipartisan move. The 120-26 vote made it a misdemeanor to shoot a firearm within city limits for the first offense.
Republican Rep. Ben Baker told the PBS NewsHour he voted for that bill, which he said was a "reasonable gun measure" to pass.
"It's just irresponsible to be operating a firearm … in that way, and I think most people that have been trained properly and have been around firearms in a responsible way get that but unfortunately, in some cases, people don't," he said.
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Another bill, filed by state House Democrats in the wake of the shooting, proposes amending the Missouri Constitution to give municipalities and counties the power to enact and enforce their own gun policies, which Sadat said could lead to cities being safer.
While Missouri's laws are comparable to states on its western border, across the eastern border is a different story.
"Our neighbor right to the east [Illinois] is much, much better, on gun legislation than we are. They have an assault weapons ban. They have a much stricter enforcement policy," she said.
But Republicans, such as Baker, argue there needs to be more in-depth thought before legislation is proposed surrounding gun policy. On the House floor, he said calls for stricter gun policy were a "knee-jerk reaction."
After shootings happen, he said, people are looking for answers and often look to the government to pass a law, which he added can be "problematic in a lot of ways."
"The premise of what I was speaking about is we need to take some time and really ponder this and try to look at it from all angles, in all of the facts and all of the details, and then go through that," he said. "I think that is the purview of what we do as legislators."
Republicans in the state have also filed their own types of gun policy this session, several aiming to expand where guns can be carried. Baker is sponsoring a bill that would change state law to allow firearms in churches and places of worship with a concealed carry permit. Over in the state Senate, a bill sponsored by Sen. Nick Schroer would allow a person with a concealed carry permit to carry firearms on public transportation. That bill has been referred to the state's Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee.
The state Legislature also passed a bill in 2021 that would have made it harder for law enforcement to enforce federal gun laws. However, the policy was met with challenges almost immediately. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case after a federal court deemed it as unconstitutional.
How Missourians feel about guns
A sign made from chairs spelled out "KC STRONG" is seen in front of Union Station, the site of a Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rally. Photo by Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star/TNS/Abacapress.com
Polling across the state suggests there is bipartisan support for some stricter gun policy. In 2023, months after the 2022 school shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, a SLU/YouGov poll found that at least 59 percent of voters supported criminal and mental health background checks, and a 21-year-old age requirement before a person could purchase a gun.
Nearly 60 percent of voters also supported tighter security in schools including metal detectors, security cameras and having a police officer on campus.
"These results suggest school safety is on the minds of many Missourians. Findings indicate bipartisan support for several school safety measures," said Ashley Donaldson Burle, chief of operations and a research fellow at Saint Louis University's PRiME Center. "However, voters are more divided or unsure on controversial measures such as allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns."
Their findings show less than 50 percent of voters support teachers or administrators having guns in schools.
Though movement on gun legislation has been slow in Missouri, Sadat said there are some versions of bills across the country that could receive more bipartisan support.
"Age limits are more palatable than some other kinds of limits," she said. [There are] a lot of good reasons to keep especially AR-15s out of the hands of very, very young people," who may be more reckless and impulsive.
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"I think raising age limits seems to be something that is easier to get bipartisan consensus for," she added.
Given the high rates of suicide in the U.S, Sadat also believes there might be opportunity for consensus around wait times for gun purchases, too. In 2021, suicide was one of the top nine leading causes of death for people 10 to 64 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Still, many policies are likely to face challenges, including the assault weapons ban.
"I don't think they're more likely to get bipartisan support because the sort of culture has grown up around them and there's this fear that … taking [assault weapons] away or banning them will lead to these terrible things," Sadat said. "But I do think that that is one of the key things that could be done to make Americans safer."
What's next?
With the state Legislature only being in session for a few weeks, many bills have only gotten a second reading with some already being referred to committee.
Given the information he has so far, Baker said there is no law that could have prevented what happened in Kansas City on Valentine's Day. More facts are needed to determine how best the Legislature should move forward, he said.
"The important thing to do is say, 'Yes, that's a terrible tragedy that happened,'" he said, and we need to take the time to go through all of the details" and look at how we can respond to those facts.
For Quade, there isn't any time to wait.
The Democratic lawmaker said the current conversations around guns in Missouri " isn't an attack on the Second Amendment or people's individual rights."
"We have folks from all various backgrounds, all political spectrums … law enforcement officers asking for us to do something about this." she said. "We don't have to live this way."