Among scores of state gun laws, most widen access

In the nearly three weeks since the Florida school massacre, state lawmakers around the country have introduced bills to ban assault weapons and bump stock and expand background checks - but also to arm teachers, lighten penalties for carrying without a permit and waive handgun permit fees.

If history foretells, the gun rights bills have a better chance at success.

In the years since the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook, where 26 were slain, states have enacted nearly 600 new gun laws, according to data compiled separately by the National Rifle Association and the Giffords Law Center to Reduce Gun Violence.

Nearly two-thirds of those - including Iowa's sweeping expansion of gun rights in 2017 - were backed by the NRA.

It is 'indisputably true” there have been far more new laws to loosen gun restrictions than tighten them, said Michael Hammond, legislative counsel at Gun Owners of America, a Virginia-based lobbying organization.

The way a state reacts to mass shootings depends on who controls its legislature, he said. And in the case of the states that expanded access to firearms, most were controlled by Republicans.

'If you are in favor of the Second Amendment, grow up with guns, are comfortable with guns, don't want to see kids turned into sitting ducks, you're more likely to say the solution is more guns,” Hammond said.

By the NRA's count, governors since 2013 have enacted 382 'pro-gun” bills, many of widely expanding access to firearms.

In 2017, then-Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad signed House File 517, which among other things established a stand-your-ground defense provision, extended the duration of permits to acquire handguns from one to five years and made secret the list of people who had obtained permits to carry guns.

This year, however, a move to expand Iowa gun rights further was squelched in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., mass school shooting that left 17 dead.

A day after the shooting, Iowa Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale, pulled Senate File 2106, the 'constitutional carry” law that would have done away with the general prohibition on carrying weapons without a permit as well as repealing the duty to carry a permit.

Iowa Gov. Reynolds, a Republic facing election this year, later said she felt 'very strongly that we should keep” Iowa's current gun-permitting arrangement in opposing the 'constitutional carry” expansion.

In expanding gun rights across the nation, governors in Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas and Texas, signed bills to would allow people with concealed carry licenses to bring guns onto college campuses.

New laws in at least five states - Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and West Virginia - allow gun owners to carry loaded firearms without a permit or training. The constitutional carry measure that Iowa so far as rejected is in effect in more than 10 other states now.

Indiana lawmakers are close to making their state the next that allows people to carry guns on church grounds, even if there is a school on church property. Jack Sandlin, the Republican state senator who wrote the bill, said it's 'common sense” to pass this kind of legislation after mass shootings.

'People want to know how to protect themselves and protect their families,” he said. Before being elected to public office, he spent 35 years in law enforcement.

Also in the past five years, 210 'gun safety laws” were enacted in 45 states, according to the Giffords Law Center, a nonprofit named after former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who survived an assassination attempt in 2011.

That's far fewer than the number backed by the NRA, but advocates for restricting access to guns don't see it that way. Comparing the number of laws that expanded gun access with the number of laws that tightened restrictions on guns is 'a false paradigm,” said Dan Gross, the former president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

'Sure, if you count every one of those little BS things that the corporate gun lobby has put out that you can say has weakened gun laws, it'd probably be a losing tally for us,” Gross said. 'But when you look at it through the lens of what states have done to make them meaningfully safer, you can make a strong case that momentum has shifted.”

Since Sandy Hook, states such as Colorado, Delaware, New York, Oregon and Washington have expanded background checks.

During that same period, Alabama, Louisiana, Nevada, Tennessee, Utah and several other states enacted laws that prevent people convicted of domestic violence from possessing a gun.

Nearly 30 states including Iowa have similar laws, and Oregon has passed a similar bill.

Unlike NRA-backed legislation that is passed mostly in red states, these measures are being passed in both blue and red states, said Allison Anderman, the managing attorney at the Giffords center.

'The NRA is not getting permitless-carry and campus-carry laws enacted in true blue states like California, New Jersey, Connecticut or New York,” she said. 'Whereas we're getting laws that we think are extremely impactful in states like Alabama and Louisiana. How many people would have been shot and killed if we hadn't passed those bills?”

Two-thirds of Americans now support stricter gun control laws, polls have found. Further, nearly 90 percent of Americans support background checks for gun purchases.

Gun control activists say there is clearly a momentum right now.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, signed a 'red flag” executive order last week that keeps guns away from people 'who pose a danger to themselves and others.” Similar measures are being considered in Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey.

The governors of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island have joined forces to create a 'States for Gun Safety” coalition to expand gun control efforts.

Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott proposed raising the age to buy assault rifles a move that was also called for by President Donald Trump.

But even with this action, many states are far from enacting new gun restrictions. Already, some states are struggling to pass bills that would ban bump stocks, the devices that allow assault weapons to fire continuously. The Las Vegas gunman used a bump stock to quickly shoot more than 500 people.

States such as Idaho, Kentucky and South Dakota are now considering measures to further loosen gun laws in the wake of the Florida shooting.

In Arizona, a state with some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country, lawmakers are unlikely to pass new restrictive bills, said state Rep. Daniel Hernandez Jr., a Democrat. He interned for Giffords in 2011, and he was there when she and 18 others were shot in the parking lot of a supermarket in Tucson. He came to her aid and is credited with helping save her life.

Hernandez said it's hard to pass restrictive gun bills in Arizona because of strong opposition from special interest groups, such as the Arizona Citizens Defense League, but also because guns are a part of the state's history.

'There is this idea,” he said, 'that with our gun culture, we can't upset the apple cart, we can't change it, because for so many people this is a part of their tradition.” Indeed, according to a 2015 survey, just one-third of Arizonans want stricter gun laws.

Stateline, an initiate of the Pew Charitable Trusts and provided by the Tribune News Service, contributed to this report.