KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A new Missouri group is seeking a ballot measure that would ask voters in 2024 to allow Kansas City, Jackson County and other local governments in Missouri to enact stricter gun rules than the state, which has one of the loosest firearm regulations in the country.
The group, called Sensible Missouri, filed three versions of a proposed constitutional amendment with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office on Wednesday. The ballot measures come as Missouri law bars local governments from creating tougher regulations than the state.
Every version of the ballot measure would empower Kansas City and Jackson County to pass ordinances that regulate the possession and transfer of guns. The city of St. Louis and St. Louis County would also be granted the same power under the proposals.
One version of the ballot measure would also allow other county governments, including in rural parts of the state, to enact tougher gun regulations through voter-approved referendums.
The group plans to conduct polling to see which version Missouri voters are likely to approve.
Kansas City continues to grapple with high homicide rates and a strained relationship between police and community members. Roughly halfway through the year, the city is close to recording 100 homicides after a mass shooting early Sunday at an after-hours club left three people dead and six injured.
Kansas City is also the only city in Missouri that does not control its police force. The department is overseen by a state-controlled, five-member board of police commissioners. Four are appointed by the governor while Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas fills the remaining spot.
While the proposed ballot measures would not put Kansas City police under local control, it would give the city more tools to address its high homicide rates.
“We realize that one size does not fit all when it comes to guns,” said former St. Louis Circuit Judge Jimmie Edwards, one of the leaders of the initiative. “It’s just common sense for local communities to determine their own destiny.”
Edwards is leading the effort along with former Democratic state lawmaker Joan Bray from St. Louis and Rick Rosenfeld, a criminology professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson, a Bonne Terre Republican, said he thought the proposed ballot measures fly in the face of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“The legislature is there to set laws and we’ve set the law right now and, apparently, the people agree with us or they wouldn’t have voted the people they did in,” he said.
However, the proposed ballot measures state that regulations passed by local governments would have to comply with the Second Amendment and federal gun laws. Earlier this year, a federal judge struck down a Missouri law that declared certain federal gun laws invalid if they don’t have a state-level equivalent.
But the state law was allowed to stay in place as Missouri appeals the decision.
Henderson is among several Missouri Republicans who are also pushing legislation that would raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to pass on the ballot. The proposed gun control measure could bolster Republican attempts to make it harder for voters to amend the constitution.
State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican, in a statement to The Star, blamed “liberal leadership” in cities for making “our communities less safe.”
“The answer to fighting violent crime in areas where crime is most rampant is to support law enforcement and actually prosecute violent crime,” she said.
Gwen Grant, the president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, said the notion that liberal leadership in cities was responsible for violent crime was “ludicrous.”
“The Missouri legislature has made it increasingly more difficult for Kansas City and other cities, Kansas City and St. Louis particularly, to manage or to control the amount of guns on our streets because of the legislation that they have passed,” she said.
Rosenfield, in a statement, said that the use of guns for hunting in rural parts of the state is different from the use of guns in cities.
“We look forward to public input during the comment period to help us decide which amendment to pursue,” he said.
The Missouri proposals are still in their early stages. A change to the state constitution at the ballot box would require an expensive signature-gathering campaign. The signatures would have to be verified by Ashcroft’s office before they go on the ballot.
