BELLEVUE, WA-The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today congratulated the Missouri Supreme Court for its intellectual honesty in ruling that there is no constitutional prohibition against carrying concealed firearms, thus upholding the Legislature’s override of Gov. Bob Holden’s veto last year.
“This is great news for the law-abiding citizens of Missouri, who may now join citizens in 46 other states in legally carrying firearms for their personal protection,” said CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron. “Thanks to the intellectual honesty of Missouri’s high court, the arguments of anti-self-defense fanatics who desperately tried to stop this law have been shown to be without merit.
“Citizens in the ‘Show Me State’ will now have the opportunity to show all the nay-sayers that they’ve been wrong,” Waldron continued. “As they have done in almost four dozen other states, legally-armed, law-abiding citizens will become a significant deterrent to crime. They will show that legally-armed citizens behave responsibly, and actually contribute to the safety of their communities.”
While the 5-2 ruling appears to leave intact some concerns about the law’s enforcement in four specific counties because of questions about unfunded mandates under the Hancock Amendment, a legislative solution appears to be already in the works.
“We know that in many other states, license fees are far less than the $100 ceiling allowed in Missouri’s statute,” Waldron said. “We are confident that officials in Camden, Cape Girardeau, Greene and Jackson counties will find this fee structure more than adequate to cover their costs.”
Waldron added that the delay in implementing the provisions of Missouri’s new law has left citizens at risk for the past four months unnecessarily.
“We are gratified that Missouri residents will now be able to fully enjoy their self-defense rights,” Waldron stated. “But there should never have been such a delay. It took twelve long years for personal safety proponents to get this sensible law passed, and when they did, Missourians had to wait another four months for the courts to uphold the law. As Dr. Martin Luther King so eloquently noted, ‘A right delayed is a right denied’.”