KC Mayor Lucas proposes firearms restrictions to address guns ‘killing our community’

With Kansas City on pace for another record-breaking year for homicides, Mayor Quinton Lucas on Tuesday announced two proposed firearms restrictions that he hopes will reduce the killing.

One would prohibit minors from buying ammunition without parental consent, and the other would ban so-called switches, devices that turn handguns into automatic weapons.

Both ordinances were drafted, he said, in ways to skirt Missouri laws that preempt local governments from enacting their own gun control laws.

Lucas made the announcement a focal point of a speech he gave Tuesday morning outside City Hall at an inauguration ceremony celebrating the beginning of his second four-year term and the seating of a newly constituted city council. Seven newly elected members are beginning their first terms and five are returning for another four years.

Lucas said he will introduce the two ordinances at the council’s first regular meeting on Thursday.

“I say clearly and unambiguously, guns and ammunition being given to minors; guns in the hands of the wrong people; guns modified to be more potent, that the prohibition-era machine guns are the problem and are killing our community,” Lucas said in prepared remarks.

Earlier in the day, he along with St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, a fellow Democrat, heard from family members of the victims of gun violence at a “listening session” at police headquarters along with police Chief Stacey Graves and Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of the anti-crime group Moms Demand Action..

Kansas City’s deadliest year on record was 2020, when there were 182 homicides, which include fatal police shootings. As of Tuesday morning, there have been 119 homicides so far this year, according to data tracked by The Star.

Lucas said the new firearms initiatives would build upon the $30 million in additional funds for anti-violence programs that were approved by the previous council this year and led by returning council members Melissa Robinson and Ryana Parks-Shaw, who is the new mayor pro tem.

At the ceremony in the shadow of City Hall in Ilus Davis Park, Lucas outlined what he saw as his main accomplishments during his first term and said he and the council would build upon them in the coming four years. He said they included the establishment of a trust fund to subsidize affordable housing, efforts to end homelessness and programs aimed stemming climate change.

“We are working each day to decrease our carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “Soon, Kansas City will be home to the nation’s largest solar array and we are working to convert our city vehicle fleet to electric vehicles where possible.”

He said he remains committed to improving basis city services as well.