A state constitutional amendment on the right to bear firearms does not allow nonviolent felons to carry guns, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in a duo of opinions announced Feb. 9, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The two 5-2 decisions, written by Judge Laura Denvir Stith, reversed lower court rulings from St. Louis that had thrown out the convictions of three men based on the Aug. 5, 2014, passage of Amendment 5. It declared the right to keep and bear arms “unalienable” and subjected laws restricting gun rights to “strict scrutiny. 
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Validity of the prohibition on violent felons was never in dispute, the newspaper said.
However, the lower court rulings had created fear among prosecutors that they would no longer be able to charge nonviolent felons for having guns. The state’s high court ruling said the amendment does not put that law in jeopardy.
“We are thrilled with the court’s decision today,” said Beth Orwick, chief trial assistant for St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce. “Prior to this decision coming down, we really thought Amendment 5 was going to impact our ability to hold felons accountable.”
What became problematic was the specific wording of the gun rights proposition, passed by 60% of voters in August 2014, which carved out an exclusion for “convicted violent felons.”
The law prohibits any felon from having a gun. It does not differentiate between prior violent and nonviolent offenses. For that reason, the lower courts held that it did not survive Amendment 5’s “strict scrutiny” test.
If framers of Amendment 5 had intended to create a “blanket prohibition on felons in possession of firearm,” St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Robert Dierker asked, why would they reference only “convicted violent felons”?
Prosecutors, in appealing his ruling and others, argued that the specific language did not prevent lawmakers from imposing restrictions on other felons as well.
The measure’s sponsor, Sen. Kurt Schaefer (R-Columbia) has told the Post-Dispatch that allowing felons to automatically have possession of firearms was not “the intent or legal effect of Amendment 5.”
The state’s top court agreed.
“The legislature has the authority to adopt laws, except when expressly prohibited by the constitution, and (Amendment 5) is silent as to the right of nonviolent felons to possess firearms,” the court noted.
Had Amendment 5 intended to prohibit lawmakers from regulating nonviolent felons, it would have simply said so, Stith wrote.
The opinion cited prior court rulings that found the state’s firearm possession charge “survives even the most stringent formulation of the strict scrutiny standard in that it is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest”— public safety.
Joyce’s office issued about 300 felon-in-possession cases from May to December 2015, not including hundreds of cases in which felon in possession was a secondary charge. It’s hard to say how many cases might have been affected by a contrary ruling, because the office has no way to track whether the prior offenses would be considered violent versus nonviolent.
The Freedom Center of Missouri, which advocates for individual liberties and limited government, cited dissents by Judges Richard B. Teitelman and George W. Draper III in criticizing the latest rulings. It believes Amendment 5 intended nonviolent felons—which could include someone who failed to pay their taxes or who illegally bet on horse races—to have the same gun rights as everyone else.
The pair of rulings reverses all three dismissals and sends them back to the circuit court.
