Liberalizing Gun Control
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Story last updated at 11:27 AM on Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Liberalizing gun control laws
Inside Law
Dan Curry
The Examiner
The Virginia Tech massacre features a disturbed gun-obsessed killer. Closer to Eastern Jackson County, a mentally ill man engaged in a random shooting spree at the popular Ward Parkway Center in Kansas City.
One would think state lawmakers might duck liberalizing gun usage for a spell.
Yet last week the "Castle Doctrine" bill breezed through the Missouri House after passing in the state Senate. The bill would inoculate homeowners from civil and criminal liability for blasting - in self defense - would-be arsonists, burglars and assailants on their home turf (or in their car).
And in April, the governor gladly signed a bill that now prevents the state or a city from confiscating lawfully possessed firearms or preventing their sale during a state of emergency - one of the bills pushed by the NRA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Such bills might seem out of step with recent events, but one local expert on gun law says these pro-gun rights laws will keep on coming. University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor Allen Rostrong says high-profile shootings don't register much of impact outside of a temporary uptick in media attention to the issue.
Popularly, gun control is not an issue anyone feels strongly about. Sensational events such as the Virginia Tech shooting, and Columbine before it, only seem to reinforce a person's set perception, Rostron said.
"The Virginia Tech shooting will make people talk a lot about gun control for a while and make lots of passionate arguments in both directions," Rostron said. "People sympathetic to gun control will see the Virginia Tech shootings as confirmation that something should be done about the problem of gun violence."
People opposed to gun control will argue that the students should have been armed, he said.
However, the recent raft of gun right legislation getting passed in Missouri and in many other states does not reflect a tidal shift in opinion on gun control in the American public, Rostron said.
There simply isn't the political will to resist the gun lobby, and the Virginia Tech shooting and similar tragedies have not yet had the impact to change that equation.
"Many Democratic politicians have decided that gun control is not a winning issue for their party, so they have shied away from the issue," Rostron said. "There are certainly some people whose overall interests would be much more aligned with the Democrats - such as on economic issues, organized labor - but the gun issue will make them vote the other way. Democrats are reluctant to scare away those people."
In the end, the Virginia Tech shooting may cause lawmakers to tighten access by the mentally ill to guns - about the narrowest issue anyone can agree on, Rostron said.
The irony is that such political timidity might just, in a roundabout way, actually achieve the result desired by the majority.
"I think the vast majority of Americans think that people should be allowed to have guns, but at the same time, guns should be better regulated and reasonable restrictions should be used to try to prevent them from getting into the wrong hands and being misused," Rostron said.
Dan Curry is a former Examiner reporter and now works as a lawyer for Randles, Mata & Brown, LLC in Kansas City, Mo. He can be reached at dan@rmblawyers.com.
Story last updated at 11:27 AM on Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Liberalizing gun control laws
Inside Law
Dan Curry
The Examiner
The Virginia Tech massacre features a disturbed gun-obsessed killer. Closer to Eastern Jackson County, a mentally ill man engaged in a random shooting spree at the popular Ward Parkway Center in Kansas City.
One would think state lawmakers might duck liberalizing gun usage for a spell.
Yet last week the "Castle Doctrine" bill breezed through the Missouri House after passing in the state Senate. The bill would inoculate homeowners from civil and criminal liability for blasting - in self defense - would-be arsonists, burglars and assailants on their home turf (or in their car).
And in April, the governor gladly signed a bill that now prevents the state or a city from confiscating lawfully possessed firearms or preventing their sale during a state of emergency - one of the bills pushed by the NRA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Such bills might seem out of step with recent events, but one local expert on gun law says these pro-gun rights laws will keep on coming. University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor Allen Rostrong says high-profile shootings don't register much of impact outside of a temporary uptick in media attention to the issue.
Popularly, gun control is not an issue anyone feels strongly about. Sensational events such as the Virginia Tech shooting, and Columbine before it, only seem to reinforce a person's set perception, Rostron said.
"The Virginia Tech shooting will make people talk a lot about gun control for a while and make lots of passionate arguments in both directions," Rostron said. "People sympathetic to gun control will see the Virginia Tech shootings as confirmation that something should be done about the problem of gun violence."
People opposed to gun control will argue that the students should have been armed, he said.
However, the recent raft of gun right legislation getting passed in Missouri and in many other states does not reflect a tidal shift in opinion on gun control in the American public, Rostron said.
There simply isn't the political will to resist the gun lobby, and the Virginia Tech shooting and similar tragedies have not yet had the impact to change that equation.
"Many Democratic politicians have decided that gun control is not a winning issue for their party, so they have shied away from the issue," Rostron said. "There are certainly some people whose overall interests would be much more aligned with the Democrats - such as on economic issues, organized labor - but the gun issue will make them vote the other way. Democrats are reluctant to scare away those people."
In the end, the Virginia Tech shooting may cause lawmakers to tighten access by the mentally ill to guns - about the narrowest issue anyone can agree on, Rostron said.
The irony is that such political timidity might just, in a roundabout way, actually achieve the result desired by the majority.
"I think the vast majority of Americans think that people should be allowed to have guns, but at the same time, guns should be better regulated and reasonable restrictions should be used to try to prevent them from getting into the wrong hands and being misused," Rostron said.
Dan Curry is a former Examiner reporter and now works as a lawyer for Randles, Mata & Brown, LLC in Kansas City, Mo. He can be reached at dan@rmblawyers.com.
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