The statute would prohibit “openly carrying or displaying any firearm readily capable of lethal use within the city unless the person possesses a valid concealed carry endorsement or permit.”
The bill has an emergency clause and thus will take effect immediately once signed by the mayor.
It is all but certain that the proposal will become law with Mayor Tishaura Jones’ signature. She made headlines recently when private text messages revealed through an open records request showed that she realizes harsh gun control measures are ineffective.
She was caught acknowledging that cities such as Chicago that dismantle the Second Amendment are seeing zero reduction in violent crime. Even further, she praised “investing in the people as a means of solving the crushing crime issue. This despite Jones’ very public condemnation of a state lawmaker who made that exact same claim.
Even after this revelation, she of course still supports sweeping statutes that only affect law-abiding citizens.
Now her city is set to ban open carry, and the punishment for violating the law is laughable. Other cities are ready to levy felony charges against violators, but not St. Louis.
If an adult is found guilty of breaching the law, they would face up to a $500 fine, 30 days behind bars or community service. For minors, the fine would be up to $500 or a sentence of community service. That’s it.
The impetus for the proposal was complaints of seeing minors openly carrying firearms at recent St. Louis events. This in and of itself is already illegal due to their age, so a simple enforcement of the law would eradicate the problem.
Bill sponsor Cara Spencer admitted there will not be an immediate fix but called it a “tool” and a “path forward.”
Missouri is well known as a bastion of gun rights outside of its two major cities. Further, state preemption laws ban city and county governments from passing their own gun control that is more strict than that of the state. But there’s a catch.
There is now a push to have Missouri voters decide if municipalities such as St. Louis should have the ability to override state statutes. Many officials hope the state’s electorate will choose to allow these governments to go far beyond the state in regulating firearms.
A new nonprofit, Sensible Missouri, aims to enable cities and counties to impose far stricter gun control measures on their citizens. The group’s Richard Rosenfeld gave his arguments for allowing local officials to supersede state law.
“When one goes from county to county, encounters different traffic laws, different regulations of all kinds, we see no reason why that same logic shouldn’t apply to firearm regulations. Rosenfeld drew a line between the situations faced by small towns and larger cities.
“The needs and preferences of residents in small, rural counties are not the same as those in larger, more urbanized counties,” he declared. “We think the best way forward here is to permit counties to establish firearm regulations that meet their own needs.”
Interestingly, current state law allows cities to control open carry of weapons, as St. Louis is attempting to implement. Local governments are wary of enforcing these restrictions, however, due to the potential for strong legal pushback from private citizens.
As the St. Louis mayor recognized in private, cities with violence issues cannot solve them by cracking down on upstanding citizens. These measures are merely window dressing and do nothing to attack the root causes of crime.
Until politicians are willing to get tough on those who prey on the public, crime will continue to increase, and we can expect more of the same.
