Why is one Missouri Republican using this moment to quietly expand “Stand Your Ground” laws?

While Missouri Republicans pulled two gun-related bills in the wake of the Chiefs Parade mass shooting, only two weeks later, new Stand Your Ground legislation is moving right back into Jefferson City. // Cartoon by Bob Unell

Less than three weeks after the mass shooting at the Chiefs Super Bowl Victory parade, where one woman was killed and more than 20 were injured by gunfire, one Missouri Republican has quietly proposed legislation to advance Stand Your Ground laws in the state—extending protections for shooters to prevent them from facing civil litigation. With the region still reeling from this senseless tragedy, what kind of politician would seize this moment to pursue even greater legal protections for those involved in violent altercations?

You’ll have to ask State Senator Jill Carter. She’s a Republican from District 32, representing Jasper and Newton—two and a half hours south of the metro. As a politician, she makes clear exactly what she considers the highest priority issues facing her constituents.

Sworn into office in 2023, Carter’ campaign website promises a stance that’s “PRO 2nd Amendment, PRO Constitution, PRO Life.” Carter’s social media accounts repeatedly post and reshare videos and opinions that are anti-abortion, anti-trans, anti-Diversity Equity and Inclusion, and furious about immigration. She is a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, and shares posts from right-wing accounts like Libs of TikTok and Candace Owens—including a call to arms that says “Ready the troops” in regard to a UK re-evaluation of discriminatory language in the 1964 film Mary Poppins.

In posts written by Carter regarding demands that parents should have more control over education, she uses wording like “Get your hands off our kids and kick these unelected bureaucrats to the curb” and “Free the hostages.”

Most tellingly, the day after the Chiefs Parade shooting, Carter expressed her primary concern on Facebook: that the event would be “used to weaponize a narrative that our Second Amendments rights should be limited.”

“As a carrying woman, mom, and mother, I will continue to stand up for our Second Amendment rights so we all can defend our families from violent criminals,” Carter continues. “Taking away our Second Amendment rights will just embolden those criminals who care nothing about our laws or our communities.”

The post also acknowledges that over 800 police officers were working at the event.

So that’s Sen. Carter.

Why are we bothering to take time examining the ideologies of a politician from rural Missouri? Because today at the capitol in Jefferson City, Carter introduced a bill that would prohibit victims of gun crime from filing civil lawsuits, in situations where the shooting was deemed justified in a criminal case. This bill (SB 989) was introduced to the Missouri Senate Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee back on Feb. 28, just two weeks after Kansas City’s mass shooting. In this meeting, no one testified in favor of nor against the legislation, and the representative of District 32 did not offer an explanation for why this was even an issue that required remedy—nor anything to the question of why it should be introduced now.

This is not the first time that Missouri politicians have tried to strengthen Stand Your Ground laws, as bills were introduced in both 2021 and 2023 with the intention of providing civil immunity—as well as providing a presumption of cause, which would no longer require criminal cases to have the shooter prove that they felt threatened in order to defend themselves. While those bills—and similar bills in other states—have not found a path forward, SB 989 is attempting to take a more minimalist approach to the expansion of “stand your ground” protections.

The entirety of Carter’s bill reads as follows:

“Under current law, if self-defense is found to be a justified defense in a criminal case, it does not abolish remedies available in a civil action. This act repeals this provision and establishes the “Keep Your Ground Act” which provides that no individual shall be held civilly liable for damages resulting from conduct found to be justified pursuant to law.”

As per The Star/AP reporting, Carter’s explanation to the committee was simply: “It basically kind of goes along with the stand your ground laws. It just deals with the civil liability. If you are found not guilty, just strengthens that language just a little bit. It’s one sentence.”

The timing of the introduction of SB 989 itself is certainly eyebrow-raising, but the wording of the bill and this explanation are concerning at best.

If passed, this would remove the only available avenue for victims of violent crime (and their loved ones) to seek restitution or accountability in situations where a human being has died. Regardless of even your personal stance on the politics of “stand your ground” laws, it’s difficult to imagine someone who is such a fan of the rule of law that they would remove an entire legal system and its rights and freedoms for Americans to hold those who have taken a life to some form of responsibility. For a politician who is self-described as “PRO life” it is hard to square the circle on how removing value from life would help.

Perhaps more directly concerning is that this bill was introduced when it was, in hopes of being enacted by mid-August of this year. Among the five men currently charged in relation to the KC mass shooting, legal scholars are already debating the degree to which various individuals may have a viable self-defense case to present. The situation at Union Station and the surrounding area involved such a stupid series of events (as described by law enforcement already) that the combination of missing motivation and Missouri’s vast gun protections means there’s a reasonable assumption that “Stand Your Ground”-style legislation will dictate how these cases play out.

In affidavits around the Jan. 17th shooting at Crown Center, where six people were injured, cell phone video filmed by one of the suspects shows one man trying to antagonize another into pulling his gun first. To repeat: in Missouri, pre-meditated shootings now include the perpetrators attempting to document that they were responding to someone else’s aggression. They know how loose the Missouri defense laws already are.

Sen. Carter has likely not played the tape through to the end on who she’s actually protecting, in pursuit of forwarding a political culture war issue, in line with the other ideologies she promotes.

Which circles us back to the explanation of this bill from its creator as simply being one sentence that clarifies language. That is, frankly, an insulting simplification of language that seeks to remove an entire category of legal recourse while also establishing an under-defined new blanket category of the “Keep Your Ground Act”—rendering this whole thing sort of non-sensical at best.

So a state senator wants to introduce legislation that is too poorly defined and equally dangerously broad in its interpretation. Plenty of state proposals are introduced every year that simply go nowhere. What sets this apart?

SB 989 is recklessly worded, but the idea behind it is not. Its introduction is as pointed as it is performative. So who is it performing for?

For Sen. Carter, this is performing her ideal world. She’s showing us what matters to her. She wants to live in a state where anyone that feels threatened can defend themselves, even lethally, and not feel pressured by any legal penalty. If she wants to live that way in Granby, MO then I wish there was a way for her to do so, without it impacting the other 6.1 million people who live in this state.

For Missouri Republican, this is performing a dip of the toe into the pool to see if anyone will notice. In the aftermath of the KC mass shooting, the party revoked two different bills increasing access to guns—the rare event where the continuous expansion of new Second Amendment interpretations could acknowledge that it would be distasteful in light of national attention on the state’s relaxed regulations and what impact that played on one of the worst days in Kansas City history. But Sen. Carter’s proposal marks her party testing the waters to see if their constituents are paying attention.

For the rest of us, the performance is now a decision about whether to react to this.

Back in February, we ran a Letter from the Editor that acknowledged all of the people saying “This isn’t Kansas City!” or “#KCStrong” or “We don’t have to live like this!” The message of that was, okay, if we don’t want to keep living under the thumb of mass shootings, we can’t just let those in charge do their normal thing of saying “Now is not the time to make this political,” and then letting it fade away for a few weeks… only to go back to business as usual. This is EXACTLY that scenario.

Right after the shooting it’s looked down on to make it “political” but this politician did exactly that. And not in the direction of making anyone safer.

Carter’s public facing government email is jill.carter@senate.mo.gov. Feel free to let her and other politicians that are already back to business as usual that we, in KC, are not. We are hurting. We have been hurting. For a city with an epidemic—but lacking control of their own police department and defaulting to the whims of a state legislature that doesn’t represent us—this kind of communication is vital right now.