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Staples: Missourians won't get concealed weapons this year

JEFFERSON CITY - The sponsor of last year's effort to legalize concealed weapons vowed Tuesday the NRA-backed issue will not clear the 1997 session of the legislature.

Sen. Danny Staples, D-Eminence, made his pronouncement shortly before the Senate approved a measure that would let retired police officers and judges pack hidden pistols.

The Senate passed the bill a wide margin Tuesday. In addition to retired cops and judges, the bill would allow off-duty police officers and current and former prosecutors to carry concealed weapons. All people carrying concealed weapons would be required to take a class or already have a firearms permit.

Passage came only after Staples all but promised that if the House broadened the bill to include private citizens, the bill would be killed in the Senate.

Last year's much broader "conceal-and-carry" bill, which Staples sponsored, would have put the question to voters of whether to allow ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons.

Staples' 1996 bill made it to the Senate floor before Staples dropped the issue without a vote because of opposition by the National Rifle Association to the voter-referendum provision.

"The bill I offered would have taken conceal and carry to the vote of the people," he said of last year's version. "It will never come back," Staples said Tuesday.

Since the NRA's opposition to a public vote on the "packed pistols" issue, Staples has been an outspoken critic of the organization.

"I don't belong to the National Rifle Association any more," Staples said. "I quit paying dues when they started telling me they were for conceal and carry, and then they urged everyone to vote against it."

The NRA favors lawmakers drafting concealed weapon legislation rather than putting it to a vote of the people, said Mary Faulkner, an NRA national spokeswoman.

"At no time did we support a referendum," she said.

Faulkner said this year's bill is worthy, but the NRA feels it doesn't go far enough in the right to bear arms.

Gov. Mel Carnahan had vowed to veto last year's bill unless it were put on the ballot.

His position on concealed weapons has not changed this year, said spokesman Chris Sifford. However, Carnahan has not specifically examined the Senate bill with its narrower scope yet, Sifford said.