By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
An attempt to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of the proposed Missouri Second Amendment Preservation Act failed by a single vote in the State Senate after passing the House 109-49.
The Kansas City Star is headlining a story on the vote by identifying Republicans who voted against the override as having “saved the state” from becoming a “national joke.” The story also addressed the Senate’s failure to override Nixon’s veto of a tax cut measure that it claimed would have been costly.
But it was the gun vote that seemed to peeve the newspaper most. The Senate vote was 22-12, one shy of the required two-thirds majority. Voting to uphold the veto were Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey (R-St. Charles) and Majority Leader Ron Richard (R-Joplin).
According to KTVO News, Gov. Nixon vetoed the legislation earlier this year, insisting that it could be unconstitutional by violating the supremacy clause of the federal constitution.
The vote came after gun rights supporters gathered at the capitol in Jefferson City to encourage lawmakers to support the measure.
Had the veto override been successful, the legislation would have placed the state on a collision course with federal gun laws. In addition to preventing enforcement of federal statutes that “infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms,” the act also made it a crime to publish the names of gun owners.
That alarmed news agencies, which considered it an attack on the First Amendment. The analysis said the “gun nullification bill would have trampled on (the First Amendment) by making it illegal to publish information about gun owners.”
New York lawmakers earlier this year hastily inserted language into that state’s new restrictive gun law to prohibit publication of information about people who have gun permits and licenses. That was in response to one newspaper’s publication of an interactive map showing the residences of citizens who have gun permits in two counties. That was in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy in Connecticut.
Gun owners believe such measures protect their privacy, while publishing the names of gun owners has been a tactic of various newspapers over the years. Critics of the practice have accused newspapers of trying to embarrass and intimidate gun owners, and one unintended consequence in the New York case was an apparent attempted burglary.
Missouri gun activists are already talking about replacing both Republicans with primary challengers.
