Missouri House bill allows guns on buses, in churches and synagogues.

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The Missouri House passed a bill Monday allowing guns to be carried on public buses and inside churches and other places of worship, chipping away at the list of places where guns are prohibited even with a concealed carry permit. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Adam Schnelting, a St. Charles Republican, would allow people with concealed carry permits to have guns on public transit. The bill includes an amendment proposed by Rep. Ben Baker, a Neosho Republican, that would also allow people with permits to carry guns in churches and other places of worship.

Churches could still prohibit guns by placing signage that states firearms are not allowed. “The reality is, people are already carrying guns on public transit,” Schnelting said Monday. “I stand by the Constitution. I stand by my constituents. And I stand by the would be victims and the victims who simply want to be able to defend themselves against perpetrators of violence and crime.” The bill passed the House on a vote of 102-45 and now heads to the Senate. The vote came just days after 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot twice and critically wounded in Kansas City after going to the wrong house to pick up his siblings on April 13. The shooting sparked national outrage and a protest this week.
William Bland, a member of the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance, told The Star Monday that concealed carry permit holders are among the most law abiding citizens, and the inability to carry a gun on a bus makes people more vulnerable. “We have gone through so much in order to obtain that permit,” Bland said. “We’re very careful about it. We’ve been trained, so I don’t see the opposition.”

Kimberly Cella, the executive director of the Missouri Public Transit Association, previously told The Star that allowing guns on public transit would seriously jeopardize federal funding for non-profit transit providers like OATS Transit and SMTS, Inc. Those providers, Cella said, have private contracts and receive federal funding, and there are requirements in those contracts that prohibit guns on transit. The bill would jeopardize those contracts and the matched federal funding, Cella said. Both St. Louis and Kansas City’s transit systems are bi-state operations governed by a federal compact that prohibits guns on public transit, and Cella said it is her understanding that that compact would supersede the bill and not apply to transit in those cities.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politic ... 13340.html
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Re: Missouri House bill allows guns on buses, in churches and synagogues.

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Once again, they do something that predominately will positively affect people of color, as people of color are, unfortunately, more likely to be lower-income in this country and thus be the ones to take the buses. Let them defend themselves wherever they have a legal right to be. Good step in the right direction here.

As for the so-called Federal compact, we don't have that nonsense here in Virginia prohibiting guns on public transit, and our transit organizations receive Federal funding, too. So, it would be very odd if Missouri officials signed off on such a monstrous provision.
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