Concealed firearms inside Missouri churches? What are our lawmakers even thinking? | Opinion
Under Missouri law, firearms are not allowed in churches or other places of worship. And for good reason. Allowing guns everywhere is bad public policy. But could churchgoers in Missouri legally pack heat in the near future?
We hope not.
On Wednesday, the Missouri House hears testimony on a bill that would lift the state’s restrictions on firearms in places of worship. If approved, House Bill 485 would allow anyone who has a concealed carry permit to take firearms into churches, according to legislation filed by Republican state Rep. Ben Baker of Neosho.
We reached out to Baker’s office for comment but didn’t hear back.
The proposed measure is misguided and potentially dangerous. Allowing concealed carry inside churches only puts more people at risk, gun safety advocates say. The Missouri Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Catholic Church in the state, opposes the measure. Other local faith leaders are opposed as well.
Church leaders in Kansas City we spoke with agree: Carrying firearms in a house of worship should be left to trained professionals.
The best way to stop a mass shooting from happening is having a police officer, hired security guard or trained congregation members with concealed carry licenses as part of a volunteer security team, church leaders told us.
At United Believers Community Church in Kansas City, only designated people are permitted to carry each week, pastor Darron Edwards said. No guns carried by the general public are allowed on the premises, he told us.
“Since the major loss of life at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, this has been the standard operation at our church,” Edwards said.
More weapons on our streets, on public transportation and inside sanctuaries do little to make any of us safer, contrary to the reckless arguments of a small percentage of gun owners.
Rarely does a good guy with a gun save the day, Daniel Claiborn, police psychologist and adviser to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s Student Threat Assessment Team, wrote in a December guest commentary in The Star.
“The ‘good guy with a gun’ is a political myth,” Claiborn wrote. “Only in very rare and unpredictable circumstances does a gun make a person safer — and overwhelmingly more often, the presence of guns makes bad situations tragically worse. Ask any police officer.”
Being reasonable and acting reasonably, without guns, make all of us safer, Claiborn wrote.
Republican lawmakers in Missouri would have you believe more firearms are the answer to public safety. That isn’t the case.
“This proposed legislation represents yet another overreach of state control, this time within the context of houses of worship,” said Vernon Howard, senior pastor at St. Mark Union Church and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City. “So what they are saying is that the legislature itself will continue to be protected from concealed carriers who desire to do harm, but those of us in houses of worship no longer will.
“Our nonviolent ethic believes in less gun presence as the key to peace.”
Additionally, there exists no empirical evidence that more guns translate to less violence and protection from those who seek to do harm, according to Howard.
“We can’t arm ourselves to peace,” he said
Reasonable gun laws — background checks, mandatory training, red flag laws — for anyone 18 and over could reduce gun violence in our state, criminologists contend.
Those who support the idea of guns inside churches have one thing on their mind: safety. And that is understandable. But letting anyone legally take a hidden gun into a house of worship is not the answer.
