Mike Parson speaks on Missouri gun laws

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - This comes down to red flag laws which Missouri doesn’t have. If an adult buys a gun legally, police can’t just take it away from them, even if there are mentally ill and family are concerned.

Recently, Gov. Parson said there is a way which we asked him to explain.

“There’s ways you do that to petition the court where somebody is legally incompetent,” he stated. “People who have mental health issues, you can take their weapons on that and that’s part of the bill that was passed. I think you can go in there and read that.”

The bill Parson referred to is the Second Amendment Preservation Act, but it doesn’t mention anything about mental health.

“Yea especially in the statutes if you go to the court and somebody is incompetent you can get a court order to take their weapon away from them, that’s been on the books for quite a while and that’s what we were talking about the other day,” Parson said.

Under state law, someone can be deemed legally incapacitated, then the courts can designate a guardian for them. There’s also a law that sets up what’s called civil involuntary detention where someone can be put in a treatment facility on a 96 hour hold.

News 4 asked Parson that if he wanted to see something where police have more authority in emergency situations, he said:

“If they’re committing some sort of act or some reason to do 96 hour holds, you can do that immediately,” Parson said. “This is happening every day here in St. Louis and we gotta figure out how you stop that whether its more police or more mental health avenues, more people to go to, more police officers on the streets, in the community, but it’s a multiple front how you gonna fix it, and I know everybody wants to make it a gun issue, I get that, but there’s a lot more to it than that.”

Some democratic lawmakers want to see immediate action on changing gun laws. They just sent a letter to the governor asking for a special legislative session to do that.

We’ll be following what happens.

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