Kirkton: Plenty of important issues, but we'll be talking guns again

In a portion of her latest newsletter, Rep. Jeanne Kirkton, D-Webster Groves, notes that while a number of crucial issues could be discussed, once again the Missouri State Legislature is going to spend its time seeing who can strut their support of guns the most. The biggest of those bills is the scaled-down version of last year's gun law, written by Sen. Ron Richard, R-Joplin, whose vote siding with Gov. Jay Nixon on the gun law veto kept the veto from being overridden.

In 2013, the General Assembly passed sweeping pro-gun legislation that even many of its supporters eventually conceded was blatantly unconstitutional. The bill purported to declare all existing or future federal gun laws "null and void and of no effect in this state," made it a crime for federal officials to enforce federal gun laws in Missouri and also made it a crime for anyone to publish the name of a gun owner in print or online for any reason in any context. Both crimes would have been punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The bill violated both the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which holds that federal laws trump contradictory state laws, and the free speech and freedom of the press provisions of the state and federal constitutions. Although the House of Representatives voted to override Gov. Jay Nixon's veto of the bill, the override attempt fell a single vote short in the Senate when the chamber's top two Republican leaders abandoned their previous support for the bill and voted to sustain the veto.

 Supporters are expected to try again in 2014 with scaled-back legislation that drops the provisions imposing criminal penalties for enforcing federal law or publishing the names of gun owners. However, supporters likely will still attempt to nullify federal gun laws, which would again render the measure unconstitutional.