Missouri legislator aims to restrict gun ownership the same way her state restricts abortion

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

A Missouri state legislator has penned a bill that would restrict gun ownership in ways that mirror the state’s recent restrictions on abortion. The bill comes amid heightened concern over deadly shooting attacks across the United States, one of which last month targeted a reproductive health facility.

In a majority conservative, Republican state like Missouri, Representative Stacey Newman tells The Independent that she realizes she is in the minority. She expects her bill to both restrict gun ownership and shed light on the effects of Missouri’s anti-abortion legislation to face harsh opposition when it is debated in the state legislature next month.

“I’m alone,” Representative Newman said. “I have colleagues in other [Republican] states. We come up against the same thing. Many of us are sick of watching people die and women restricted from a legal medical procedure.”

“So we are fighting back,” she added.

So far she’s received an outpouring of support from across the country — including, she says, campaign donations ahead of Missouri’s general elections in November 2016.

“There's an energy of people saying we have got to stop the gun violence and stop horrid attacks on women's abortion rights.”

Representative Newman’s bill would make prospective gun-owners wait for 72 hours before purchasing a firearm, mirroring the September 2014 state legislation requiring women to wait 72 hours before having an abortion. Other proposed restrictions include requiring gun purchasers to travel at least 120 miles from home to purchase a gun, mirroring the effects of legislation requiring that clinics meet hospital-level standards that shuttered all but one of the state’s clinics. Reproductive rights advocates charge the lack of available abortion providers makes it impossible to undergo the procedure for women without the economic means to travel long distances.

State law also requires women to obtain oral and written information from doctors on abortion that Newman says is “not medically accurate.” Representative Newman’s bill would require that prospective gun-owners meet “with at least two families who have been victims of violence involving a firearm and two local faith leaders who have officiated, within the past year, a funeral of a victim of violence involving a firearm who was under the age of eighteen,” the bill text says.

Abortion has become heavily politicized in Missouri in recent months. State Senator Kurt Schaefer made headlines late last month when he aimed to block a University of Missouri student’s bid to conduct research for her doctoral thesis on the effects of the 72-hour waiting period on women.

Senator Schaefer — the chair of the state Senate’s Sanctity of Life Committee, which aims to investigate illegal uses of state funds to promote abortion — said in a letter to university officials that the research would essential use public funds from the university to produce a dissertation tantamount to “a marketing aid for Planned Parenthood.” Reproductive rights advocates have called Senator Schaefer’s bid to block the dissertation a thinly veiled attempt to stifle discourse on abortion.

Senator Schaefer is expected to run to become the state’s attorney general next year. While Representative Newman says she has yet to hear any opposition from Senator Schaefer’s Committee or elsewhere, she said his opposition to the dissertation is emblematic of his attitude toward abortion.

“He wants to use this and other fear tactics to win an election with no regard how it affects real people,” she said.

Senator Schaefer did not respond to an interview request from The Independent.

Representing a bastion of liberalism in St Louis, Missouri, Representative Newman says she has been “punished quite a bit” for being “pretty outspoken” on issues like women’s reproductive rights and gun control.

“I've been punished quite a bit — Not being able to speak on the floor being blocked from committees. All the political avenues the majority party has,” she said.

Newman’s bid began in the aftermath of a shooting at a Colorado Springs, Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic on November 27 that left three people dead. Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organisation that offers reproductive health care across the United States and internationally. The group came under fire earlier this year when abortion opponents at Center for Medical Progress released heavily edited hidden-camera videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue from abortions for scientific research, a charge that the organisation denies.

But her bill is not just about protecting women’s reproductive rights. Gun violence is all too common in St Louis Representative Newman said.

“Our trauma center in St Louis has gun violence victims everyday.”

Gun violence has killed more than 12,000 people across the country this year, according to research compiled by gun violence opponents at Washington D.C. based non-profit organisation Gun Violence Archive.