We cover anti-gun state legislatures and the dozens of gun-control measures filed across the nation to the point that it is easy to forget there are just as many pro-gun states as there are anti-gun.
A good reminder of that fact is Missouri, where Republicans in the Show Me State legislature are pushing a number of measures to ease unconstitutional restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.
One such measure, HB 2176, which was heard in committee on January 25, would prevent state from ever enforcing a so-called “red-flag” law, even though no such law currently exist in Missouri. Such “extreme-risk protective orders” are used in many states to allow courts to confiscate a citizen’s guns without due process of law.
St. Louis Democrat Rep. Steve Butz has already filed a red-flag measure, HB 2193, this session, but the bill has yet to be scheduled for a hearing.
House Speaker Pro Tem Chad Perkins, sponsor of the anti-red flag measure, said on the committee hearing that “adult mature people” should be able to remove a family member’s firearm without a court order.
“To assume that someone is guilty without probable cause is absolutely un-American,” Perkins added.
Along with the anti-red flag law language, HB 2176 also addresses a number of other issues pro-gun lawmakers wish to revisit. It would lower the minimum age to obtain a concealed carry permit from 19 to 18 and prevent local governments from regulating concealed carry permits. That’s the sole authority they currently have concerning guns under the state’s firearms preemption law.
Additionally, the measure would create the automatic presumption that those using deadly force in self-defense have acted within reason.
“A victim who fights back, successfully managing to protect themselves, should not be victimized a second time by our legal system,” Susan Myers, director of Missouri’s chapter of Women for Gun Rights, said during testimony on the bill.
Additionally, a few versions of the Second Amendment Protection Act have been reintroduced this session. Most TTAG readers will likely remember that Missouri lawmakers passed and Republican Gov. Mike Parson signed the “Second Amendment Protection Act” into law back in 2021. The law, passed in response to several anti-gun maneuvers by the Biden Administration, forbade police from enforcing federal gun laws that didn’t have an equivalent state law. Law enforcement agencies with officers who knowingly enforced federal gun laws without equivalent state laws faced a fine of $50,000 per violating officer.
A district court ruled the law to be unconstitutional, and that ruling was upheld by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but last April the court declined to hear the case.
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