Some Kansas Citians look for gun control after the Super Bowl parade, but state law limits get in the way

Takeaways:

• In both Missouri and Kansas, state laws restrict how cities and counties impose their own gun control regulations.
• Some local politicians are determined to take action on gun control despite state restrictions.
• Polls say a significant portion of the population supports measures such as age restrictions for gun purchases and background checks.

Update (Feb. 16, 2024): In response to Wednesday’s shooting, Missouri House Republican Majority Leader Jon Patterson told The Kansas City Star , House Republicans abandoned two gun-related bills. One would allow guns to be carried inside churches and on buses and another would eliminate sales taxes on firearms and ammunition.

“While I do think both proposals are worthy of debate, they have no path to becoming law at this point,” Patterson said in a statement. “Now is not the appropriate time to be taking up those bills and therefore they will not be brought up this session.”

It’s possible to imagine Kansas City — anguished by chronic gun violence and freshly angered by Wednesday’s nightmarish Super Bowl rally — clamping down on guns.

If only it could.

State lawmakers and the governor of Missouri see guns more as a tool of self-defense than as the source of carnage. They put laws in place that bar Kansas City, Jackson County or anywhere else in the state from imposing local gun control.

Likewise, Kansas suburbs would find their hands similarly tied when it comes to placing tighter local limits on firearms.

But some local politicians appear determined to try anyway, pushing for local action even if it means a possibly doomed battle to try to overcome state restrictions on what gun restrictions a city or county can impose within its borders.

“Give me the biggest, baddest, toughest common-sense gun reform options that we have,” said Jackson County Legislator Manny Abarca IV. “We’ll deal with preemption” — the state ban on local restrictions — “later.”

In Missouri , you don’t need a permit to buy or carry a gun. You don’t need a permit to carry a concealed weapon (with a few exceptions for certain locations). The state doesn’t allow  “recklessly” selling or lending a gun to anyone under 18 without the consent of the child’s parent or guardian.

In Kansas, anyone over 21 can carry a concealed weapon without a license. People under 21 get a standard concealed-carry license while people under 18 get a provisional license. There is no minimum age to get a gun and no background checks are required.

Missouri gun laws block cities from passing their own restrictions

Missouri, Kansas and 43 other states have preemption laws that bar cities from passing local gun restrictions.

Both Kansas and Missouri have Republican-controlled legislatures that regularly reject gun control bills.

“Missouri’s preemption law is extraordinarily broad,” said Alison Shih, senior counsel at Everytown for Gun Safety. “Missouri has tied the hands of local governments from putting in place proactive measures to prevent exactly this kind of tragedy from happening.”

Local governments can pass measures related to where someone can shoot a gun inside a city’s limits or regulating open carry of firearms for those who do not have a permit for a concealed weapon. Otherwise, local measures must match state firearms laws. The Missouri law also prevents cities from suing gun or ammunition manufacturers.

But local ordinances have shown, at best, to make a marginal difference in gun violence.

Chicago, for example, sits next to Indiana, a Republican-led state with weaker gun laws. Illinois requires more permits and background checks while Indiana does not.

Chicago sued an Indiana-based gun shop in 2021 because so many weapons it sold ended up as evidence in Chicago-based crimes.

A 2017 Gun Trace report linked Westforth Sports Inc., the gun dealer the city sued, to 2.3% of the guns recovered in Chicago gun crimes. Three Indiana gun dealers and seven neighboring cities sold over 20% of the guns recovered in gun crimes between 2013 and 2016.

That’s why national gun control groups see more promise in federal legislation. But Congress has only proved slightly more willing to adopt national gun restrictions than Republican-controlled state legislatures.

Federal law goes further than Missouri’s statute, but the state’s “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” passed in 2021, bans local and state law enforcement from helping to enforce a federal gun law. It also subjects law enforcement officers to fines up to $50,000 if they enforce it. Courts have ruled the law unconstitutional, but state officials have appealed that decision, making Missouri’s enforcement of federal regulations murky.

Jackson County wants to push the limits of Missouri law

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed a law last summer that regulates open carry of guns — but it came with concessions.

The ordinance takes advantage of one loophole in Missouri’s preemption law, prohibiting open carry by anyone who doesn’t have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Police can temporarily take a gun — and check to see if it’s been linked to a crime — from someone who’s carrying a firearm without a permit.

“It essentially gets the gun off the street at the moment,” St. Louis Alderwoman Cara Spencer said.

Kansas City has a similar law on the books from 2014, but it is unclear if the city is enforcing it.

St. Louis also passed a ban on the open carrying of a weapon by anyone other than law enforcement. But that ordinance cannot be enforced without an initiative petition vote or change to state law.

One initiative petition effort to allow cities to pass their own gun ordinances is on hold .

Kansas City Council member Andrea Bough said she feels an urgency to do whatever the council has the power to do to prevent gun violence, within the confines of preemption law.

“I’m racking my brain to find ways that we can address this that isn’t the regulation of guns,” she said. “Yesterday, the whole world was watching. But people are dying on our streets every day, and it’s because of gun violence.”

Members of the Jackson County Legislature want to pass gun controls after the mass shooting on Wednesday, but most gun restrictions likely pose a violation of state law that would bring a court battle.

The county’s governing body is ready to pick that fight.

“I would love a court of law to challenge, particularly in this state,” Abarca said. “We’ll take it all the way up.”

Across the state line, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, has no plans to introduce gun control legislation this week, according to Commissioner Melissa Bynum.

Missouri and Kansas gun control views

It isn’t clear how the parade would have been different if Kansas City outlawed, for instance, the carrying of a concealed firearm. Searches of a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people would have made the event nearly impossible.

So even with a city ordinance — at the junction of two states with gun laws lacking significant age or registration requirements for gun possession — it would prove nearly impossible to keep the guns away.

Despite opposition from lawmakers to gun restrictions, polling shows that Missourians broadly support stronger age limits.

A February 2023 poll from St. Louis University and YouGov found that 69% of Missourians favor banning gun purchases by people under 21, including 59% of Republicans. A majority — 79% — of Missourians also support criminal background checks for all gun purchases, including 73% of Republicans.

In Kansas, a 2022 survey from Kansas Speaks found that 78% of respondents supported requiring Kansans to be over 21 to purchase a gun. A majority, 74%, also supported making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks.

Could Kansas or Missouri gun laws change anytime soon?

Republicans control both the Kansas and Missouri legislatures. That makes sweeping gun control measures unlikely.

Republicans in Missouri have already brushed off the idea of more gun restrictions.

Kansas lawmakers are pushing forward a state constitutional amendment that would make it harder to pass gun restrictions. The amendment would require gun legislation to pass a higher legal standard to be allowed. Supporters of the amendment contend that bills could still be passed in the name of public safety. Voters would have to approve the amendment.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach supports the amendment. He said even though there were 800 police at the parade, some were not close enough to stop the shooting in time.

“The ability of a friendly bystander to be the good guy with a gun, which in some cases is the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is essential,” Kobach told reporters. “There just aren’t enough law enforcement officers to protect everybody, everywhere, at every time.”

In Missouri, Democratic lawmakers have tried for years to pass any form of legislation that could curb access to guns. Few bills get a hearing, and many are only referred to committees in the final days of the legislative session.

In 2023, a measure was voted down along partisan lines that would have prevented a minor from carrying a gun in public without a 21-year-old present.

In the meantime, lawmakers have rolled back parts of Missouri law relating to guns. In 2007, lawmakers repealed a law requiring a permit to buy a handgun. That was followed by at least a 25% increase in firearm homicides .

Lawmakers have recently prioritized allowing guns to be carried in churches and on public transportation, as well as eliminating taxes for sales of firearms and ammunition. A measure that would increase the penalty for participating in celebratory gunfire passed both the House and Senate in 2023, but the public safety package was eventually vetoed by Republican Gov. Mike Parson.

Recent Kansas laws removed some fees for getting a concealed-carry permit. That law still requires some Kansans to take classes to get that license, and the law was intended to make these classes more affordable in the interests of safety.

Another bill encouraged schools to teach an NRA gun safety program to students so Kansas kids were better prepared to be around firearms. It was derided as an opening for a group that advocates for stronger gun rights and got vetoed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

In Kansas, a bill allowing cities to pass restrictions was introduced in 2023 but hasn’t had a hearing. Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, chairs the committee controlling the bill’s fate. He’s said he hasn’t had time to look at the proposal.

Kansas City has been drawing big crowds in recent years, for the NFL draft and Super Bowl parades. And in 2026, it will host World Cup matches.

But Wednesday’s mass shooting brought national attention to gun violence in the city.

Local officials like Abarca worry what might happen next.

“These crowds should not scare us,” he said. “Because they’re coming, and if we don’t prepare for them, then this is going to happen again.”

This story was compiled by Scott Canon based on staff reporting.

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