Why won’t Missouri Gov. Mike Parson listen to police on guns and domestic violence?
How odd that some of the biggest “Back the Blue” supporters pay no attention at all to police when it comes to a subject they happen to know a lot about: guns. Somehow, the same people who like to say that “Blue Lives Matter” and that violence would be curbed if only law enforcement had more resources also tend to disregard everything police have to say about keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.
A new Star investigation into gun violence, and specifically domestic violence, details how fatally that scourge plays out in Springfield, Missouri, the 11th most violent city in the country. Springfield is also the domestic violence capital of a state that’s second only to Alaska for its per-capita rate of men killing women. And women whose abusers have access to a gun are five times more likely to be murdered.
Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams, who is highly focused on and forward thinking in his approach to intimate partner violence, sees a direct link between the spike in all kinds of violence and the relaxation of gun laws in Missouri in recent years.
In 2016, as president of the Missouri Police Chiefs Association, he and the association he headed strongly opposed the passage of the Missouri law that tossed out the concealed carry permitting requirement. “We had something that worked really well, and responsible gun owners know the value and danger of a firearm. We should do safety training and background checks,” Williams told The Star.
As he said in an interview with The Star Editorial Board, “We had a really good concealed carry statute, and we did away with that. And we’ve seen a proliferation” of all kinds of violent crime in the years since “that’s somewhat tied to that. What I’ve seen is people turn to using a firearm to settle problems” a lot more automatically since the law changed. His police organization “fought that long and hard, but I don’t see us going back.”
Though Williams is probably right, there’s no reason that it has to be that way. The only thing precluding commonsense curbs is political squeamishness about doing anything to limit gun ownership. Asked about red flag laws that would take guns away from domestic abusers, Williams said, “removing the possibility of a firearm from a domestic violence situation can have nothing but a positive effect.”
When Missouri Gov. Mike Parson was asked about red flag laws earlier this year, he said, “The red flag laws, and whatever the definition of a red flag law is, I haven’t been supportive of that. I don’t even know what the definition of that is, and I don’t think a lot of people know. The bottom line, I’ve been pretty clear. When it comes to law-abiding citizens, I’m going to protect the Second Amendment. Period.”
Domestic abusers are not law-abiding citizens, though, even if they aren’t often prosecuted until the charge is homicide. Protecting lives is important, too, isn’t it?
As a Springfield police officer told Janice Thompson when she called to report yet another violation of her protective order, “Ma’am, until there’s a chalk outline around your body, we aren’t going to do anything.”
Which is ugly, but all too often accurate. As that comment makes obvious, more police training is needed, too, even in places such as Springfield, where they’ve been teaching victim-focused, trauma-informed handling of domestic violence cases for years.
But police do know better than anyone other than victims themselves that lives would be saved by taking guns away from those with a history of domestic violence. If more Missouri lawmakers and Gov. Parson listened to them, they’d know that taking guns away from abusers is no threat to the Second Amendment.