The GOP-led House in Missouri voted against a proposal that would ban unsupervised minors from carrying guns in public, the Associated Press reports.
The proposal to ban children from carrying guns in public without adult supervision was defeated by a vote of 104-39 after a long debate about how to fight crime in St. Louis. One Republican voted in support of the ban.
State Democratic Rep. Donna Baringer said she sponsored the amendment to the broader crime bill because police in her St. Louis district asked for tighter laws to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”
“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them. Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed,” Baringer said.
The provision was initially included in a larger crime bill by Republican Rep. Lane Roberts, a former police chief and state public safety director. But, Republicans on the House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee removed it Thursday.
“This is about people who don’t have the life experience to make a decision about the consequences of having that gun in their possession,” Roberts said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Why is an 8-year-old carrying a sidearm in the street?”
But, other Republicans argue that banning unsupervised minors from walking in the street with a gun will infringe on minors’ Second Amendment rights.
“I just have a different approach for addressing public safety that doesn’t deprive people, who have done nothing to any other person, who will commit no violence, from their freedom,” said Rep. Bill Hardwick (R).
State Rep. Tony Lovasco told the Washington Post in a statement: “Government should prohibit acts that directly cause measurable harm to others, not activities we simply suspect might escalate. Few would support banning unaccompanied kids in public places, yet one could argue such a bad policy might be effective. While it’s reasonable to be wary of minors’ carrying guns, any solution to juvenile crime needs to be crafted properly and respectful of individual rights.”
Minors in possession of firearms in public became an issue in 2017 after Missouri Republicans repealed concealed carry in most cases.
A spokesman for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, told the Post-Dispatch at the time that “under current state law, there is no minimum age to lawfully possess a firearm.”
While Republicans overwhelmingly oppose banning unsupervised minors from carrying firearms in public, they propose other measures to help curb gun violence, such as allowing the governor to appoint a special counsel in counties with high crime rates, like St. Louis.
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