Missouri lawmakers fire verbal shots at each other over firearms bills

House Committee Hearing Room 5 was overflowing with Missourians interested in firearms legislation that the General Laws Committee was hearing Monday.
House Committee Hearing Room 5 was overflowing with Missourians interested in firearms legislation that the General Laws Committee was hearing Monday.

Their colleagues grilled each other as members of the House considered firearms bills Monday afternoon.

Scores of people packed into a hearing room, spilling into the hall for the Missouri House of Representatives General Laws Committee hearings Monday afternoon. The room filled early as the committee was scheduled to hear presentations for eight firearms-related bills.

House Republican leadership postponed consideration of the bills from the committee's Feb. 19 agenda, less than a week after 17 people were shot and killed at a Parkland, Florida, high school.

By coincidence, their original date would have fallen on lobby day for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense.

Still, some 75 people associated with the organization attended Monday's committee meeting, said Becky Morgan, the organization's volunteer chapter leader for the state of Missouri.

Among the people associated with the organization who took time out to speak was Carin Hoffman Grinch, a mother from Columbia in favor of a bill sponsored by Rep. Greg Razer, D-Kansas City. House Bill 2281 would require all sales or transfers of firearms to be processed by a federally licensed firearms dealer who would first be required to conduct a background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Razer's bill was one of several added to the agenda for Monday's meeting after the hearings were postponed. Republicans said they wanted to allow Democrats' bills, like Razer's, to have a chance to be heard.

Razer said he filed the bill to bring two sides together.

"When it comes to issues regarding guns and firearms, we always seem to retreat into our corners," Razer said. "One side thinks that someone's coming to take their guns and the other side thinks that every man, woman and child is going to be armed."

Razer said he was raised in the Ozarks, and when times were bad his parents fed him game that was available venison and fried squirrel. Game his family hunted.

And he said he was trying to find something the two sides could agree on.

While questioning Razer, Rep. Jered Taylor, R-Nixa, said that in recent mass shootings federal background checks have failed citizens. He said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had dropped the ball. (The FBI has said it did not act on tips that Nikolas Cruz, the confessed shooter in Parkland, was an erratically acting gun owner with a desire to kill people. And he had posted disturbing comments on social media sites.)

Taylor argued the proposed legislation is "putting a roadblock in place" for law-abiding citizens who want to own firearms.

In her testimony supporting the bill, Grinch told lawmakers that gun violence had touched her family in very personal ways.

Her kindergarten daughter lost a member of her after-school program - a University of Missouri student - to gun violence about six months ago, Grinch said. Less than two months later a neighbor of Grinch's sister in western Missouri was shot and killed outside his home. And about a month ago, her brother-in-law, who is a Division 1 football coach, lost a player to gun violence.

"Gun violence has touched my family," she said.

She added 19 states require background checks on all private handgun sales. In those states, 47 percent fewer women are killed in domestic violence incidents and 53 percent fewer police officers killed in the line of duty. Eighty-three percent of Missourians said they favor criminal background checks for gun purchases, she said.

"You have an opportunity today to take one step closer to making Missouri safe again," Grinch said.

Razer's bill was among eight the committee considered Monday.

Early on, a crowd in the room listened as Rep. Peter Merideth's, D-St. Louis, questioned Rep. Justin Hill, R-Lake St. Louis, over House Bill 1865.

The bill would allow employees to transport and store firearms in privately owned vehicles in parking lots of the places they work.

Hill said employees are going to bring their firearms onto their employers' property regardless of employers' wishes.

Merideth argued that in terms of property rights, he was surprised Hill would want to disallow someone who owns property from having their own rules about who can come onto it or whether they can bring firearms onto it.

Hill said it was the "Constitutional right" of a person to carry a firearm almost anywhere they went.

Merideth asked Hill how this bill would affect the property owner's Constitutional rights, then quickly moved on to asking how the bill would apply to his home.

"There's more of an expectation of property rights in a personal residence, because you can actually tell people to leave," Hill said. "(The bill) does not negate their ability to tell them to leave."

Hill said he's creating a policy that is intended to prevent an employer from vilifying an employee for bringing a firearm onto the property.

As the discussion heated, Hill asked if Merideth was OK with part of the bill.

"I'm not OK with any of it," Merideth shot back, drawing applause from the audience. He added, "I doubt you're going to get my vote under any circumstances."

The discussion drew a second round of applause, causing the committee Chairman Rep. Robert Cornejo to quiet viewers.

Alexis Engelbrecht and Lisa Sanning, Jefferson City mothers who attended as part of the Moms Demand Action group, said they were at the hearing primarily because they are concerned about HB 1936, which changes the list of locations a person can carry a concealed firearm within Missouri. It also prohibits colleges and universities from creating policies preventing employees or students from carrying concealed weapons.

Engelbrecht said the bill allows people with permits to carry concealed firearms to have guns at day care facilities, hospitals, public universities, private schools and bars.

"What kind of society are we creating?" she asked. "It's a scary world. Evidence and common sense are in favor of not supporting this bill."

Sanning, who has a daughter, was thinking about a few years in the future.

"My 14-year-old daughter will be in college soon," Sanning said. "I'll send her out of state to go to college if this law passes."