Missouri left gun laws unchanged after 2024 shooting. KC now reels from another
When one person was killed and more than 20 people were shot at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rally in 2024, the mass shooting sparked the loudest outcry for changes to Missouri’s gun laws in recent history.
In the two years since, nothing changed. Over the course of two legislative sessions in Missouri and Kansas, lawmakers returned to their districts without passing any new limits on guns or additional safety requirements.
And then over the weekend — just hours after the two-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Union Station — gunfire erupted once again in Kansas City. This time it was inside a nightclub on Kansas City’s Westside. Two women died; two others were injured.
The fatal shooting early Sunday morning has once again renewed a debate over Missouri’s gun laws, among the loosest in the nation. It also highlighted the plague of gun violence in Kansas City, where local leaders have long struggled to combat homicides and fatal shootings.
“As a Kansas Citian, this violence needs to stop,” said Ereekus Washington after her younger sister, Eboni Silas, was shot and killed in Sunday’s nightclub shooting. “Nobody wants to be going out thinking that they’re not going to make it home.”
But the lack of movement after the Chiefs rally shooting — a highly public event witnessed by hundreds of thousands of fans and lawmakers of both parties — has residents and local and state officials wondering if change will ever happen.
“What’s clear to me is that until the makeup of this legislature changes, there will be no changes to gun laws in Missouri,” said Missouri House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, a Kansas City Democrat.
In the days and weeks after the 2024 mass shooting, Republicans moved quickly to beat back possible gun restrictions. That rhetoric continued in the wake of the recent weekend shooting at the Kansas City nightclub.
Sen. Joe Nicola, a Grain Valley Republican, told The Star on Thursday that he saw nothing in the state’s gun laws that needed to change. Nicola emphasized, however, a need to both protect law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights and “keep guns out of the hands of others that are doing it.”
“Every time there is a shooting, a mass shooting or whatever, that’s the word that goes out, right? We need stricter gun laws,” Nicola said. “Well, stricter gun laws really only affect the law-abiding. The people that are using it for crimes and things like that, they’re still able to get guns.”
In Missouri, guns are both pervasive and fiercely defended. Missouri allows 19-year-olds to carry concealed weapons without a permit and state law severely restrains cities and counties from setting their own regulations.
Missouri also does not have a minimum age requirement to possess a firearm, a law that gun control advocates have criticized for allowing minors to carry guns.
A 2021 law also declared certain federal gun laws “invalid” if they don’t have a state-level equivalent, which faced intense criticism from local police officers. That law was eventually struck down in federal court, but Republican lawmakers are hoping to revive a version of it this year.
Mayor, prosecutor push changes
Inside the packed Status Nightclub in an industrial part of Kansas City, gunshots rang out at around 2 a.m. Sunday. Those inside the club told The Star they heard multiple pops before people began running or hit the floor.
Silas, 29, and Tishauna Ballard, 24, were killed. Two days after the shooting, prosecutors charged Dontae M. Brook from Kansas City, Kansas, with two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of armed criminal action, one count of first-degree assault and two weapons crimes.
In interviews with The Star this week, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson pressed for changes to the state’s gun laws. They both pointed to Missouri’s self-defense law, which offers broad protections for residents who use physical force.
Lucas called the law “terrible,” saying that it was leading to a loss of lives in Kansas City. He framed it as Missouri’s “O.K. Corral approach,” a reference to the infamous Wild West gunfight in Tombstone, Arizona.
“The first and most important thing we can do is reevaluate our laws that are akin to ‘stand your ground,’” Lucas said. “Reevaluate the excessive self-defense laws we have in this state, which, I think, frankly, encourage people to bring firearms to crowded places.”
Johnson echoed that argument in an interview, in which she also pointed to an opinion piece she recently wrote in The Star addressing Missouri’s self-defense law. She used the Chiefs rally shooting as an example.
“It is very, very difficult to charge anybody in some of these shootings if it is not clear who the initial aggressor is,” said Johnson, who is a gun owner. “That can be extremely difficult when you literally have a group of people that are kind of raising tensions and an inner argument with each other and then everybody pulls out their gun essentially at the same time and starts firing.”
When asked specifically which gun laws could prevent something like the weekend shooting in Kansas City in the future, Johnson suggested lawmakers adopt a slew of changes including licensing, background checks and red flag laws.
State law could also curtail certain types of guns, like the high-capacity, handheld firearm used in the nightclub shooting, Johnson said. But that shooting also illustrated that even gun laws on the books aren’t being enforced properly, she said.
“This particular person shouldn’t have had a gun in the first place because he was a felon out of Kansas,” Johnson said. “We need to enforce what we already have so that we can continue to build on it.”
Lucas, Johnson and advocates for stricter gun laws also pointed to Missouri’s other gun laws, including a quirk that prevents local governments — such as Kansas City and St. Louis — from enacting stronger firearm regulations than the state.
Kansas City reels again
Those arguments echo comments made two years ago. In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 Chiefs rally shooting, Democrats filed a series of firearm safety measures. They went nowhere. A top Republican scrapped plans for two gun rights bills. Those bills were refiled the following year.
One day after the mass shooting, a press conference inside the Missouri Capitol illustrated Republicans’ resistance to any talk of gun reform. Then-House Speaker Dean Plocher, a St. Louis-area Republican, refused to answer questions about the state’s gun laws and abruptly ended a news conference after he was asked repeatedly about the Chiefs rally shooting.
“We will evaluate the investigation as it unfolds and address that,” Plocher said in response to a series of questions. “We’re not going to dwell on Kansas City today.”
When The Star asked whether Kansas City should be able to enact stricter gun regulations than the state, Plocher cut off the reporter’s question and ended the news conference, saying, “We’re done here. Thank you.”
Two years later, as Kansas City grapples with another fatal shooting and the deaths of two young women inside a nightclub, Missouri lawmakers were in Jefferson City this week discussing a bill that would further protect gun rights throughout the state.
The legislation marked a revamped version of the Second Amendment Preservation Act, a 2021 state law that claimed certain federal gun laws were invalid. The new version repeals that provision, but gives gun owners broad protections against public officials.
“Public officials in the state of Missouri have no authority to knowingly violate the law-abiding citizens’ legal rights regarding firearms, firearm accessories or ammunition,” Rep. Jim Schulte, a Republican from central Missouri, told his colleagues on Monday, referring to the bill as “the back the blue bill.”
Despite the pushback from state lawmakers and fears from Kansas Citians, Lucas expressed hope that Missouri could eventually enact changes to its gun regulations.
“I think highly of Missourians — I think we’ll get it someday,” Lucas said. “Even if it means that I have to shout it from the mountain tops until I have a bunch of gray hair. Fortunately, I’m bald, so if I don’t grow a beard, it’s going to be all right.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
