‘Law’ at last: After 13 years, Blair’s Law, criminalizing ‘celebratory’ gunfire, is signed

      July 4 was the 13 year anniversary of the death of 11 year-old Blair Shanahan Lane.  Five days later legislation criminalizing “celebratory gunfire,” such as what ended her life, was signed into law. 

Blair Shanahan Lane

      That signing was the culmination of 13 years of work by a determined mother who responded to the senseless death of a daughter by refusing to give up.

      “It’s just what got me out of bed … knowing I could make something happen,” Michele Shanahan DeMoss said after the law bearing her daughter’s name was at long last signed into effect.

Michele Shanahan DeMoss and Representative Mark Sharp (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Up to one moment on Independence Day, 2011, Blair, Michele, and the rest of the family were celebrating the holiday and all was normal.  The next moment, Blair was suddenly laying on the ground, and what Michele had known as “normal” was ended.

      Blair had been struck by one of many bullets fired carelessly into the air by a person at a party more than half a mile away.  She died the next day.   

      The man who fired that gun served 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter.  There was no state law that addresses what is often called “celebratory gunfire,” until Tuesday when Governor Mike Parson (R) signed Senate Bill 754, which includes “Blair’s Law.”

      Blair’s Law makes the unlawful discharge of a firearm within or into the city limits of a community a class A misdemeanor for a first offense, a class E felony for a second offense, and a class D felony for subsequent instances. 

      It is a change that has received broad, growing, and consistently bipartisan support every year it was proposed.  Representative Mark Sharp (D-Kansas City) joined five years ago the list of lawmakers to sponsor it in the House.  He said to see it finally signed is a huge relief.

      “I had a good chance to see other folks lead the way and lead the charge on Blair’s Law and I picked up where they left off,” Sharp said Tuesday. 

      Also sponsoring Blair’s Law this year is Representative Sherri Gallick (R-Belton), who was inspired by Michele after meeting her while knocking doors during Gallick’s run for office. 

      “I am extremely happy for Michele.  She did this for Blair to save lives and bring more awareness,” Gallick said. 

      This year’s version of Blair’s Law was the second to reach the desk of Governor Parson.  He vetoed last year’s version, siting objections not with it, but with other provisions within the same bill.  Before signing SB 745 yesterday he addressed that action.

Governor Mike Parson (center), joined by Representative Mark Sharp (left) and Senator Tony Luetkemeyer (right), addresses Blair Shanahan Lane’s family before signing Blair’s Law into law. (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      “I’m sure they were disappointed,” Parson said regarding last year’s veto.  “I thank you for staying the course to do what is right because you’re going to help somebody else out, and at the end of the day and that’s what we’re all supposed to be doing … and I can tell you I will be very proud to sign this on your behalf today.”

      When it was vetoed last year, Sharp and other legislators who had worked on it immediately assured DeMoss that it would be a priority in this year’s session.  DeMoss never lost hope and never criticized those involved in the process.

      “I also believe there were many reasons why we didn’t get here and I’m not mad at them.  It took some time, but there’s a saying about the tortoise and the hair and I clearly am the tortoise, but we’re here,” said DeMoss.

      As she, Sharp, and others have observed often, each year that the bill didn’t pass was another year that it was refiled, and each time the attention it received grew.  Supporters hope that growing publicity discouraged at least some incidents of celebratory gunfire. 

      Sharp said in his district and others in the state, however, incidents are still occurring. 

      “Every year, Fourth of July, New Year’s Eve, Shot Spotter systems are picking up gunshots of people illegally, recklessly discharging their firearms in the city limits.  Fireworks are one thing but shooting your gun off with reckless abandon is completely uncalled for.  People are being wounded, people are being killed, countless property damage to our homes and to our cars, communities are unsafe, it’s just time that we change the culture in Kansas City and get rid of this bad habit,” Sharp said.

      Gallick agreed, “Gun ownership is a responsibility.  Guns are not toys and they should not be used recklessly to celebrate.  We now have stricter penalties.”

      The Kansas City Police Department said that during last week’s Independence Day holiday period of 6 p.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. the next morning, there occurred one casualty incident, four aggravated assaults, and three incidents of property damage, all of which were believed to be related to celebratory gunfire or possibly fireworks.  The Department’s Shot Spotter technology, during that period, detected 280 rounds of gunfire within the Kansas City limits.  Another 110 reports of shots fired were called in to the Department and 911 dispatchers.

Blair’s family speaks with Governor Mike Parson ahead of the signing into law of Blair’s Law. (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      DeMoss said Tuesday that she is not done.  She has always felt called to her advocacy, and she does not know where that will lead her next, but she feels sure something is coming.

      “I need to get through today and the rest of this week, and maybe the rest of this month,” DeMoss said.  “I know that [what’s next] will reveal itself to me.  For 13 years it’s got me out of bed so there is something that’s next and I am confident in that.”

      During the past thirteen years DeMoss has often said that she talks to Blair, and feels Blair with her, especially as she lobbied for this law.  She felt her again on the day of the signing.  She noticed something that frequent Capitol goers will recognize:  décor in the stairwells with an “M” for Missouri alternating with a Hawthorn blossom, the result of which looks very much like the word “Mom.” 

      “I come around the corner and at the middle of the staircase I see ‘Mom.’  The first time I walked through the doors I heard that, and today I heard that.  Quietly, inside of me, she still pushes me.  Pushes me to get out of bed, and pushes me to persevere, and I know I’ll see her again.”

Countless visitors to the Missouri Capitol have found meaning in the stairwells’ “M” for Missouri interspersed with the state symbol hawthorn flower. To Michele Shanahan DeMoss, it was Blair’s message encouraging her to push forward.

      “It’s rough and I don’t want any other mom or family, husband, brother, sister, or coworker to sit in my seat, so I would do it again.  I would not do Blair’s death again but I would persevere in the situation of coming to Jefferson City, advocating and educating for something that makes a difference.  Hands down.”

House panel seeks success in creating higher ed performance-based funding plan

      A House effort to arrive at a successful performance-based model for funding the state’s colleges and universities launched on Tuesday.

Representative Brenda Shields (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      The House Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding held an introductory hearing, in which it heard several presentations about the past attempts at performance-based funding. 

      Committee Chair Brenda Shields (R-St. Joseph) said it’s important to know what’s come before.

      “This has been attempted several times.  We haven’t been successful,” Shields said.

      She said if there is to be a chance for a better result this time, everyone must have a seat at the table.

      “It’s going to require us to engage all the stakeholders.  That’s all of our universities and our community colleges, all of our institutes of higher education along with the [Department of Higher Education] to be able for us to be successful in developing a formula that actually has a measurement model to it.  How do we know how we’re performing if we don’t have measurements?  So that’s what we’re really looking for, is how can we measure our fixed costs, the variable costs, and then our performance funding on top of that, so that our universities actually know what they’re working towards.”

Representative Kevin Windham (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Shields said if not all of the state’s institutions have buy-in, any new formula will be doomed. 

      “If [a legislator] doesn’t feel as if their individual university that they represent is happy, they will vote against it, or I believe I will vote against it if my university felt as if they were not receiving fair funding.  I would vote against it and it would bring the people of my region against it, and it’s really hard to pass a formula unless you feel as if everyone is a winner somewhere in that formula.”

      What the legislature is using now in setting higher education funding is a “base plus” model, but Shields said no one has been able to tell her where that base came from.

      “Every year, if the legislature thinks that we can afford a three-percent increase, we use the current base and we add three percent to it.  First of all, nobody can explain how the base was created.  Secondly, it doesn’t take into account that things have changed, so we give everybody a three percent increase based on their base and maybe their student enrollment has increased dramatically.  Maybe it’s decreased dramatically.  Maybe they’ve taken on teaching some degrees that are more expensive to offer … and we haven’t taken any of that into account.  We just continue to add a percent to this base number that no one can remember how it was created.”

MU System President Mun Choi addresses the House Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Tuesday’s hearing set the Department of Higher Education to the task of creating a work group with representation from all the institutions of higher education in the state. 

      “They will begin to sit down and break down what’s the fixed cost.  Let’s define ‘fixed costs,’ what are your fixed costs, what are the variable costs of running an institution, and then of course, what should be our measurements for a performance funding model?  They will agree upon what those measurements are and then we’ll move from there.”

      Shields said the goal is not to pass a new funding mechanism in the 2025 legislative session.

      “What our hope is for the ’25 session is that we have a system in place which we can test and simulate and make tweaks to, and so we will spend the entire ’25 session making tweaks.  I do not believe that we’ll pass legislation in ’25.  I think the soonest that we’ll pass legislation will be in ’26 for use in ’27.”

      The committee will meet three more times this year.

Task Force resumes look at Missouri’s response to substance abuse

      A Task Force that hopes to advance Missouri’s response to substance abuse has resumed work. 

Representative John Black (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      The Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention Task Force met in the 2023 interim and developed recommendations for the legislature, some of which were enacted.  One of those was that it be continued this year, and its chairman, Representative John Black (R-Marshfield), is glad that was passed.

      “I think we’ll do more or less the same thing we did last year.  We’ll look at some of the issues that we’ve identified for review this year and then hopefully the Task Force will continue to refine those and come up with more issues.  The budget, of course, is a big deal,” Black said after the Task Force met Monday.

      Representative Del Taylor (D-St. Louis) is glad to be a part of the group.

Representative Del Taylor (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      “Missouri, as our counterpart 49 other states, as well as most countries in the world, are really struggling with getting our arms around substance abuse disorder.”  He said the group heard from experts Monday that, “[Substance abuse] is kind of how we respond to our own different mental illnesses.”

      The Department of Mental Health’s Chief Medical Director, Dr. Angeline Stanislaus, opened the session with a discussion of the neurobiology of addiction.  She said much has been learned in the last three decades that can guide the state’s programs. 

      It was believed in the medical field some 20 or 30 years ago that when a substance was out of a person’s system and they resumed using it, it was by choice and they had an issue with discipline or willpower.

      “That was the mindset in which we were trained as physicians in the 1990s,” Stanislaus said.  “There’s been more research now to show that just because a substance is out of the system … but all the neurotransmitter changes the substance did before it got out, they’re still lingering and the body’s still working on them.  This is the new understanding over the last couple of decades, it took us this long to understand that.”

Dr. Angeline Stanislaus and Director Valerie Huhn with the Department of Mental Health (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Stanislaus said many people who abuse substances like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin do so because they were victims of childhood abuse or neglect that altered their brain chemistry.

      “The brain wasn’t connected the way to produce a natural level of dopamine and neurotransmitters that a brain needs for us to lead healthy lives … same thing with violence.  Witnessing a lot of violence changes the brain chemistry.  There’s a lot of fear.  The neurotransmitters that are impacted by fear will go up, so when you have so many fear neurotransmitters going on in your brain you may seek a substance to decrease that fear.”

      A brain disrupted by substance abuse will never return to what it was before, but it can heal.

      “The brain is such a wonderful organ.  It’s very neuroplastic, that can produce itself more neurotransmitters given enough time, given treatment, this is how treatment works.  Give them enough time for the brain to recreate all this dopamine and all those other neurotransmitters, either through medications, combination of therapy, combination of whatever needs to be put together … that’s the true potential of what the brain can possibly do and that’s what we try to do as treatment providers.”

      Former Missouri House Speaker Todd Richardson has been the Director of MO HealthNet since 2018.  Much of what the Task Force discussed with him was its recommendation from last year that a new state executive be created – what members have tentatively referred to as a “czar” – to oversee substance abuse issues across the various state departments that deal with those. 

      He said while the idea has merit and could work, giving one figure authority over three, four, and even five departments and asking that person to understand and take on all that is involved in substance abuse issues, could prove too much to ask.

      He thinks the effort the Task Force has set in motion should be given time to work.

      “I think it is incredibly important that the departments continue to collaborate in this space and make sure that our policies are complimentary of each other … I think that collaboration is better than it has ever been before.  While I think the idea behind having somebody to oversee this is the right thinking, I really think the best way to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish is by trying to continue to encourage that collaboration between those departments.”

      To the Task Force’s credit, Richardson said, “I do think the focus that this task force has put on it has already led to more collaboration and coordination and discussion about this subject than I’ve seen in the 15 years I’ve been coming to Jefferson City.”

Representative Todd Richardson (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Taylor appreciates the different backgrounds brought to the group.  A budget-minded legislator himself, Taylor hopes to get more data about Missouri’s substance abuse response.  

      “Consistently I want to know:  what are the programs and how do we measure effectiveness?  Is the program actually working?  How much have we appropriated for that program and are we spending the money that we appropriate?  Let’s at least be honest and up front about how much of that is actually going to get used, how many people are you going to actually hire, and how much of that is going to lapse?”

      Some members weren’t present at Monday’s hearing due to technological or medical issues.  Black hopes more members will be able to attend in subsequent hearings.

      “The more people we have, the more involvement, the more good questions.  That would be beneficial, but I’m very happy that the Senate, the House, and the governor’s office are supportive of the continuing work of the task force.”

      The Task Force will meet again in July.