Each week during the 2025 Kansas legislative session, we will provide Johnson County lawmakers the opportunity to share their thoughts about what is happening in the state capitol.
Below is a submission from Democratic Rep. Jo Ella Hoye, who represents Kansas House District 17, covering parts of Lenexa and Shawnee.
We published a commentary from Republican Sen. Kellie Warren earlier this week.
The views expressed in each Capitol Update are solely those of the lawmaker.
The Kansas Legislature has been chipping away at our gun laws over the past two decades.
Kansas suffers gun violence rates above the national average and ranks #37 in the country for “gun law strength,” according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
Violent crime has been rising since permitless carry was enacted in 2015, though there were slight decreases shown in the state’s Violent Crime Index in 2021 and 2023. States with the weakest gun laws have the highest rates of violent crime and police deaths, according to the American Journal of Public Health.
This year, the legislature has revived a dangerous constitutional amendment to strip Kansas of its few remaining gun safety laws. If adopted, a strict scrutiny judicial standard would threaten to eliminate Kansas’s most crucial public safety laws, including prohibitions by convicted felons and domestic abusers.
Even worse, this dangerous attempt to weaken our gun laws is disguised as a pro-Second Amendment expansion for ammo and accessories.
What proposed amendment says
HCR 5006 would expand the right to bear arms to include “the possession and use of ammunition, firearm accessories and firearm components.”
This change alone wouldn’t be enough to keep me up at night, but I am worried that voters may not pay close enough attention to the second part of the amendment and take the time to consider how the strict scrutiny standard would be applied.
The proposed amendment continues, “The right to keep and bear arms is a natural and fundamental right. This right shall not be infringed. Any restriction of such right shall be subject to the strict scrutiny standard.”
What has happened in other states
Four states have enacted such strict scrutiny standards, including Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri and Iowa.
In Missouri, a total of five criminal defendants challenged the felon in possession of a firearm statute, and Louisiana had nine criminal defendants challenge the state’s gun laws all due to the amendment to their state constitutions.
This constitutional amendment would tie our state up in costly litigation defending our gun safety laws against convicted criminals and domestic abusers who want to get their guns back sooner.
Though I think there could be many differing and reasonable opinions on whether or not the right to bear arms should include ammunition and accessories, I hope that we can all agree that convicted felons should not be able to purchase and possess firearms for time periods appropriate to the severity of their crimes.
A final point
In 2022, more than half of violent crimes in Kansas went unsolved according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center.
Firearms are the number one killer of children and teens in the United States. We need data and resources to solve more violent crimes and deter future violence to make our communities safer.
Kansas lawmakers should be doing more to solve the gun violence crisis instead of gutting our gun laws.
