Playing Politics With Guns In St. Louis

Leftist politicians everywhere would prefer to blame the implement rather than the criminal who used it. Such is the case in St. Louis, Missouri where Mayor Tishaura Jones (D-St. Louis) is proposing a multitude of new firearms ordinances.

From her press release issued yesterday:

  • Prohibit military-grade weapons on our streets 
  • Prevent transfer or sale of guns to minors
  • Take action on ghost guns and similar untraceable firearms
  • Prepare St. Louis for the passage of Blair’s Law
  • Prohibit insurrectionists and those convicted of hate crimes from having guns

She goes on to say:

“In the coming days, in partnership with the Mayor’s Office, aldermen are ready to introduce commonsense gun safety legislation,” said Mayor Tishaura O. Jones. “We come together around a shared vision: a safer, stronger St. Louis, ready to stand up for our values. We know Missourians are demanding state-level action to pass measures like red-flag laws and background checks, but we are ready to try every tool available to us at the local level to protect families from gun violence.”

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes on her press conference, she includes AR-15s and AK-47s in the list of firearms subject to prohibition. Mayor Jones also expects blowback from Republican legislators.

Other than the obvious constitutionality issues with Mayor Jones’ moves at gun control, there is an even bigger obstacle at the state level. Missouri has state preemption on all issues regarding firearms with the exceptions of banning open carry to those without a carry permit and regulating discharge within municipal boundaries.

Missouri General Statute 21.750 states, in part:

 *21.750.  Firearms legislation preemption by general assembly, exceptions — limitation on civil recovery against firearms or ammunitions manufacturers, when, exception. — 1.  The general assembly hereby occupies and preempts the entire field of legislation touching in any way firearms, components, ammunition and supplies to the complete exclusion of any order, ordinance or regulation by any political subdivision of this state.  Any existing or future orders, ordinances or regulations in this field are hereby and shall be null and void except as provided in subsection 3 of this section.

  2.  No county, city, town, village, municipality, or other political subdivision of this state shall adopt any order, ordinance or regulation concerning in any way the sale, purchase, purchase delay, transfer, ownership, use, keeping, possession, bearing, transportation, licensing, permit, registration, taxation other than sales and compensating use taxes or other controls on firearms, components, ammunition, and supplies except as provided in subsection 3 of this section.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey reacted swiftly to Mayor Jones’ attention-grabbing pronouncements. He reminded her that Missouri has strict scrutiny with regard to firearms laws and that her proposed ordinances were against Missouri general statutes.

When speaking of St. Louis, it should be noted that the city and the county are not one and the same. St. Louis County has a population of just less than one million people. The City of St. Louis, by contrast, has a population of 296,000. What locals refer to as North County, West County, and South County compromise a much larger proportion of the population than the City.

Does the City of St. Louis have issues with crime? Absolutely. Are the guns recovered by police at the scene of crimes AR-15s or AK-47s? Not really. 90% of all firearms recovered are handguns.

The meme below does give an indication of the level of crime in St. Louis. Perhaps if Mayor Jones focused more on criminals and gangs she would have more success than focusing on firearms.

Democrat State Party Platforms – Massachusetts To Missouri

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag(‘js’, new Date());

gtag(‘config’, ‘UA-115029161-1’);

Continuing on with my series of posts detailing the position of the individual state Democratic Parties on firearms, we move on to a quintuplet of “M” states.

Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Democratic Party platform actually has very little in it regarding firearms. My supposition is that it was created in 2017 before red flag laws came into vogue and, perhaps more tellingly, because Massachusetts already so much gun control.

From the platform adopted in 2017:

Preventing gun violence through universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons and
high-capacity magazines.

This was from the section entitled, “Public Safety and Crime Prevention”, which deals more with the militarization of the police, community policing and corrections, and the like.

Michigan

The Michigan Democratic Party platform calls for “common sense gun safety” which must be the dog whistle code words meaning more gun control. In a section of the platform that deals much more with prison reform than crime, the Democrats have this to say about guns and gun control:

Enact common sense gun safety measures. Democrats recognize the Constitutional right of Americans to
keep and bear arms under the 2nd Amendment. The vast majority of Michigan gun owners are responsible
citizens and sportsman that value the strong Michigan tradition of hunting and safe use of firearms.
Democrats, along with vast majorities of the American public, support common sense gun safety proposals like closing the gun show loophole and preventing potential terrorists from purchasing
firearms. If an individual is deemed too dangerous to fly, they should be too dangerous to buy a gun.
Democrats also support banning military style weapons, like the AR-15, which has been used in mass
shootings in Sandy Hook, Dallas, Orlando, and across the nation.

The Michigan Democrat’s platform was one of the first I remember seeing advocating using the “no-fly” list to make one a prohibited person.

Minnesota

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party has much less on gun control in their ongoing party platform than I would have expected. Their section on Public Safety and Crime Prevention only had this to say about firearms:

Reasonable firearm policies that promote public safety and crime prevention without infringing on the
rights of hunters and other sports enthusiasts.

Now the question as to what is a reasonable policy is open to discussion. I would call attention to the fact that they don’t want to infringe “on the rights of hunters and other sports enthusiasts”. They say nothing about those who would use a firearm for self-protection and self-defense. This is interesting as this section also calls for mandatory sentences for drug dealer and rapists as well as stiff penalties for child abuse.

The Minnesota DFL webpage does have an endorsement of March for our Lives and condemns the NRA. That might give you a better feel for what the DFL considers “reasonable firearm policies.”

Mississippi

The Mississippi Democratic Party platform was adopted in 2016 and make absolutely no mention of firearms or gun control. It concentrates much more on education and voting rights. Given the history of voting rights in Mississippi in the 1960s, this is understandable.

The Mississippi Democratic Party web presence is a mess. They still have an active website the basically stops in 2008, the one they publicize on Twitter – http://www.mississippidemocrats.org – goes to a suspended webpage, and the one I got the platform from calls itself the classic Mississippi Democratic Party page.

Missouri

The Missouri Democratic Party platform was adopted in August 2018 and calls for reasonable gun control measures. Reasonable is in the eye of the beholder as you can tell below:

Reasonable firearm policies that promote public safety and crime prevention
without infringing on second amendment rights. Mandatory background
checks and 72-hour waiting periods on the purchase of weapons

  • An assault weapons ban
  • Keeping daycares, schools, health care providers, churches, and
    universities as gun-free zones
  • Keeping illegal guns off our streets and out of the hands of kids
  • Preventing domestic abusers from owning guns

Perhaps not surprising given that Ferguson was in Missouri but the platform endorses Black Lives Matter, body cams for cops, eliminating minimum sentences, and training in non-lethal techniques for police. It also calls for full restitution of voting rights and the ability to hold public office after a sentence is served.

SHOT Show 2018: Rimfire Challenge World Championship Announced

Michael Bane announced the dates and the location of the Rimfire Challenge Shooting Association’s World Championship today at the SHOT Show. The championship will be held October 3rd through 7th at the Lucas Cattle Company Ranch in Crossed Timbers, Missouri.  The ranch is owned by Forrest Lucas who is the founder of Lucas Oil Company.

Crossed Timbers is located in the Ozark Highlands of Missouri. The Crossed Timbers Region is where the prairies of the Great Plains meet the Eastern deciduous forests. It is about a two hour drive from Kansas City and a 3 1/2 drive from St. Louis.

More information on the event will be posted as it becomes available.